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Saturday 12 March 2016

Discover & explore and Lamentation for the forsaken







Shared service with St Martin-in-the-Fields - Monday 21st March, 1.10pm at St Stephen Walbrook

This will be a Discover & explore service with the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Choir of St Stephen Walbrook and our organist Joe Sentance. The choirs will sing the anthem which has given the themes for this Discover & explore service series; Eric Whitacre's 'Hope, Faith, Life, Love'.

The theme of this service will be 'Soul' and the preacher will be Dr Carolyn Rosen. Following the service, the artist Michael Takeo Magruder will discuss his digital art installation 'Lamentation for the Forsaken, 2016'. 

This installation can be seen until Good Friday at St Stephen Walbrook (weekdays, 10am – 4pm, except on Wednesdays, 11.00am - 3.00pm), as part of ‘Stations of the Cross 2016’ an exhibition across 14 iconic locations in London during Lent. In his installation, Takeo offers a lamentation not only for the forsaken Christ, but others who have felt his acute pain of abandonment. Click here to view Arriving at Station XIII, a short series of videos exploring the development of this newly commissioned artwork for the Stations of the Cross project. The videos follow Takeo's progress as he conceives, develops and finally presents his installation at St. Stephen.

The Tablet has said of this installation:

"In the richly harmonious interior of Christopher Wren’s St Stephen’s Walbrook, Michael Takeo Magruder’s Lamentation for the Forsaken is inspired by a passage from Lamentations (5:1-2) whose contemporary relevance is achingly obvious: “Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us; look and see our disgrace! Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to aliens.”

On the tomb-shaped installation’s four modular screens an image of the Turin Shroud comes in and out of focus as parts of Christ’s body merge with news photographs of Syrian refugees. In the place of Christ’s feet we see migrants in transit, littering railway lines and piled on to overloaded boats; in the place of Christ’s hands we find refugees caring for loved ones, alive, injured and dead; in the place of Christ’s body we witness asylum seekers caught up in conflict, clashing with police with riot shields. Christ’s face, meanwhile, yields place to a hollow-eyed young woman and a wide-eyed child dangling a limp doll. Underlying the shifting images is a mesh of Roman capitals recording the names of the dead as a roll of honour."

Before then our next Discover & explore service at St Stephen is Trust (Monday 15th March) at 1.10pm. All are most welcome.


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Eric Whitacre - hope, faith, life, love.

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