Christ's College Chapel Unveils Its First Commission of Art in 500 Years

Easter Sunday (the 24th April) 2011 will be a very special occasion for Christ's College Chapel in Cambridge University, as it unveils a new altar reredos by the current Leverhulme Artist in Residence, Tom de Freston. This will be the fruition of an exciting and developing collaboration, first imagined by Christopher Woods and Pablo de Gandia (Tablo Arts) at the end of 2008. The paintings were conceived to mark the 500th anniversary (2010) of the chapel's consecration.

The service will be an Anglican Choral Evensong with special choral music by the College Choir. There will be readings from the Authorized King James Version of the Bible which is 400 years old this year. A sermon will be preached by the College Chaplain. In the course of the service, there will be an unveiling and dedication of the altarpiece and a short conversation between the Chaplain and Tom de Freston about the work of art.

This publication provides insight into the making, meaning and wider context of the works, showing de Freston's studies and works on related themes. The range of figures who have contributed writing to this catalogue is testament to the signifi - cance of the project. Nicholas Serota provides a foreword, Rowan Williams considers the spiritual relevance in de Freston's altarpiece paintings, Graham Howes considers their relationship to the context of Christ's Chapel, Ruth Padel puts them into an art historical context and Jaya Savige gives insight into two other paintings of de Freston's which tackle religion in a Miltonic form. Alongside this is a conversation between de Freston and Sir Anthony Caro, two interviews by Pablo de Gandia with de Freston, and a specially-commissioned poem responding to the chapel paintings by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

Tom de Freston is the current Leverhulme Artist in Residence at Cambridge University and Artist in Residence at the Leys. He has previously held the Levy Plumb Award at Christ's College, Cambridge. He is currently working on a body of paintings for the British Shakespeare Association to be exhibited at their annual conference in September 2011.

In 2011 Tom will have solo shows with HRL Contemporary and Tablo Arts in London. In addition, Tom will be curating and participating in a show at the RCA.

This year Tom has also launched a new academic website: www.tomdefreston.co.uk/tragedy.

All works by Tom de Freston unless otherwise stated.

© Tom de Freston www.tomdefreston.co.uk [email protected]

This Page: Detail of Deposition (a study) , 2009, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 100cm

Published by Green Pebble in conjunction with Christ’s College, Cambridge Editor Ruby Ormerod www.greenpebble.co.uk DEPOSITION: A NEW INSTALLATION a t C h r i s t ’ s C o l l e g e , C

Nicholas Serota a m

Foreword b r i d g

Sir Anthony Caro in Conversation e By Tom de Freston

Ruth Padel Discusses Tom de Freston’s Deposition

Pablo de Gandia Interviews Tom de Freston

Graham Howes From Seeing to Believing?

Pablo de Gandia Interviews Tom de Freston about death

Rowan Williams Spirituality in de Freston’s Deposition

Jaya Savige Discusses ‘The Seat of Desolation’ Miltonic depth in the work of Tom de Freston

Kiran Millwood Hargrave Surfacing - A Poem

Revd Christopher Woods Words of commendation from the Chaplain of Christ's College 69 DEPOSITION: A NEW INSTALLATION a t C h r i s t ’ s C o l l e g e , C a m b r i d g e

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Previous Page, Left Deposition (left hand panel), 2010, oil on canvas, 190 x 115cm Previous Page, Right Deposition (right hand panel), 2010, oil on canvas, 190 x 115cm Left Deposition (insitu at Christ's College Chapel), 2010, oil on canvas, 190 x 115cm This page Deposition (insitu at Christ's College Chapel), 2010, oil on canvas, 190 x 115cm

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Foreword By Nicholas Serota 2010 marked the 500th anniver - such a commission is a huge sary of consecration of the credit to him, his work and the Chapel at Christ's. The anniver - College. The way in which sary is to be celebrated by the Christ's has embraced contempo - installation of two new site- rary art in this manner is unusual, specific altarpiece paintings on but reflects both an understand - the theme of the Deposition made ing of the role art can play in by the young contemporary his - worship and the long history of tory painter, Tom de Freston. the involvement of the College The paintings have been with the visual arts. designed to respond to the unique De Freston's paintings normally spatial, spiritual and aesthetic explore themes of Tragedy in demands of the Chapel and the contemporary painting, with his subject of the Deposition has most recent body of works been chosen to complement the drawing directly from Shake - Opposite page: presence in the antechapel of Sir speare's plays and Milton's Deposition study Anthony Caro's sculpture on the Paradise Lost . In his altarpiece 2009 same theme. paintings, the multiple figures, oil on board 30 x 20cm Caro is one of our country's narrative and interior space seen most admired artists and the in his literary paintings have been This page: College Chapel is a space of sacrificed in order to create a dip - Swimmer of Lethe great importance and history, both tych which responds to the spe - 2010 architecturally and spiritually. For cific challenges of the Chapel oil on canvas a young artist such as Tom de commission. Each painting shows 190 x 130cm Freston to have been afforded a single figure hovering between

74 dark columns. As such, the The responses to the works Study of Falling , 2008 figures seem to exist in direct re - published in this catalogue are Monoprint on paper lation to the space of the Chapel testament to their achievement 30 x 20cm itself. The placing of the figures, in giving eternal questions con - choice of colours and the sense temporary form. of self-reflexive light all disclose This catalogue reveals a de Freston's interest in a history series of conversations; between of images that were also impor - two works of art, between the tant to Caro, notably Rembrandt works and the austere beauty of and Rubens. The solid geometry the Chapel, and between the two of the paintings and the hovering works and earlier works that take forms show an acute understand - the Deposition as their theme. Nicholas Serota ing of the construction of space These conversations provoke Director, Tate and form. De Freston's canvases, a rich engagement with faith whilst structurally similar to each and spirituality. That the 500th Nicholas Serota has been Director of other, are a dialogue of opposi - Anniversary of the Chapel has Tate since 1988. Since then Tate has tions, in which he explores both afforded an opportunity not just opened Tate St Ives (1993) and Tate Modern (2000), redefining the Millbank the fleshy, weighty pathos of the to look back but also to look to the building as Tate Britain (2000). Tate has Deposition, and the ethereal present and the future is an also broadened its field of interest to weightlessness and hope of the impressive achievement. The include twentieth-century photography, Resurrection. installation of de Freston and film, performance and occasionally Caro's sculpture and de Caro's work creates a harmo - architecture, as well as collecting from Freston's paintings are confirma - nious celebration in a Chapel Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. tion that contemporary art is still where art, architecture, prayer As a curator, his most recent exhibitions able to offer a new and engaging and music come together to have been Donald Judd and Cy Twombly reflection on themes that have provide a deeply moving at Tate Modern and Howard Hodgkin at fascinated artists for centuries. spiritual experience. Tate Britain. 75 DEPOSITION: A NEW INSTALLATION a t C h r i s t ’ s C o l l e g e , C a m b r i d g e

Sir Anthony Caro in Conversation By Tom de Freston ‘Art is often sourced by religious figuration and towards abstrac - themes. Art is best appreciated in tion. Yet, over the past two quiet contemplative situations, as decades his work has regularly in religion.’ made returns to figuration. The -Sir Anthony Caro (AC) Deposition is one such work. Caro’s sculpture hits you the mo - Sir Anthony Caro’s recent visit ment you enter the antechapel, to Christ’s (in conversation with and I wanted to provide a similar Tim Marlow and Dr. Caroline visual fulcrum to the Chapel. Vout) showed him to be an Gushing writers and artists are articulate, warm and eloquent tiresome, but I cannot overstate speaker, but not one who feels a what a privilege it has been to need to justify his work through make paintings which will exist in loquacious philosophy. direct relation to this great sculpture. ‘Artists make sculptures and paintings.The words about their ‘The Deposition is a tender work and their practice are subject and the sculpture in unnecessary and are best the antechapel speaks in a minor answered by critics and writers key. The dead body is being let on art.’ (AC) down from the cross in a winding sheet and wrapped for burial. Sir Anthony Caro’s Deposition is Mourners surround the scene. ’ Sir Anthony Caro a masterpiece, but remains one (AC) Deposition of the less well-known works in (In situ at Christ's College the oeuvre of Britain’s finest living We become one of these ante-chapel) sculptor. Caro was the sculptor mourners. By existing in real 2001 responsible for dragging Western space and relating to our size, Bronze and brass sculpture out of the constraints of it turns us into a witness figure,

76 like those which exist within the and brass sheet, forged and Sir Anthony Caro frame in many of Rembrandt’s hammered in soft folds and Sir Anthony Caro (born 1924) has played Deposition images. Caro ac - welded together ,as with all three a pivotal role in the development of knowledges his references: dimensional collages. They are twentieth century sculpture. After studying not cast or decided-on in sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools ‘Rubens’ great painting in Antwerp advance from sketches or in London, he worked as assistant to Cathedral and Rembrandt’s little maquettes.’ ( AC) Henry Moore. He came to public attention painting now in Munich both with a show at the Whitechapel Gallery in served as inspiration.’ (AC) The ‘loose shapes’ play against a 1963 and has had major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York ‘geometric structure’, describing (1975); the Trajan Markets, Rome (1992); It is these two painters who also the descent of the figure across the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo had a profound impact upon my space. This process is not (1995); Tate Britain, London (2005); and in paintings. The shift from painting described, but instead evoked, by three museums in Pas-de-Calais, France to sculpture (and in my case back the mechanics of the work. Caro (2008). His work has consistently provided the other way) is an interesting states: points of radical departure for the one. What is clear in Caro’s developments of three-dimensional art. sculpture, and I hope in my paint - ‘The Deposition’ is not a literal He was knighted in 1987 and received the ings, is that this inspiration is representation, but it suggests Order of Merit in May 2000. always filtered through a process the subject. Such work requires which puts the unique tendencies the onlooker to fill the gaps as of the artist’s own medium at the he/she feels. This is the way that centre of their practice. poetry is read; it asks for an active contribution from the In both of our cases, Clement reader. Like the music in the This Page: Greenberg’s philosophy has im - chapel, I hope this sculpture will Deposition study 2009 pacted upon the process (in help to induce a mood of Pen on paper Caro’s case through a close rela - reflection.’ (AC) 30 x 25cm tionship with the American critic). Sir Anthony Caro’s sculpture Opposite Page: Caro spoke to me of a process certainly achieves this. I can only Sir Anthony Caro led by his materials: hope that my paintings in some Deposition way contribute to this quiet mood (In situ at Christ's College ante-chapel) ‘I work directly with the material. of spirituality and contemplation. 2001 The sculpture is made in bronze Bronze and brass

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Ruth Padel Discusses Tom de Freston’s Deposition Sombre colours, the unchanging struggle we have now, living our pale and dark of naked human lives in our bodies and also in our bodies facing the shadows they psyches: a relation with the dark must face, for a chapel whose which W. H. Auden evoked in his wooden panels have hidden Elegy for Sigmund Freud, when hollows and shadows of its own. he imagined the figures of the A ladder and a cross – and a unconscious as creatures of human figure on the ground, night: looking at them. A young figure About him ’till the very end falling in a brown rush of air or were still perhaps water. Is it drowning? Or those he had studied, the struggling up to the surface, to fauna of the night, some light we cannot see? and shades that still waited to Together and separately, the enter two panels of Tom de Freston’s the bright circle of his Deposition , created for Christ’s recognition… College Chapel, will pose impor - but he would have us tant questions for us all to answer remember most of all differently, at different times, to be enthusiastic over the during prayer, music and service. night, Like Rembrandt’s portraits, or not only for the sense of Goya’s figures trapped in night, wonder they ask us to think about the it alone has to offer, but also way we are all, in different ways, because it needs our love… set against the dark. In our Tom de Freston’s colours here Opposite Page: environment; in how we look at match the serene browns of the Deposition study things (like that ladder, and the chapel. But the chestnutty tinge 2009 Oil on canvas leaning rungs we shall all have and bubbled texture give them a 72 x 100cm to climb in our time); and in how human warmth, and an energy we live – headlong, falling and which speaks to the Chapel’s This Page: struggling, up and down. history, this building which has Study after Rembrandt Christ on the Cross is present changed so much in five hundred 2009 in each panel differently, as a years to become the tranquil Pen on paper reminding metaphor, a future to chapel and antechapel of today, 30 x 20cm contemplate, but also in the but which began as a much

80 larger single space surrounded of that window, they ‘came at last by bare pink brick. And whose to our own minds and went unique inward-looking window beyond them.’ They imagined and secret stair, built for a what it would be like, if ‘the tumult woman to observe and receive of the flesh were silenced; and mass, reminds us of crucial chap - the phantoms of earth and waters ters in the Ninth Book of St and air were silenced; and the Augustine’s Confessions. poles were silent as well; indeed, St Augustine describes how he if the very soul grew silent to stood with his mother a few days herself, and went beyond herself before she died, looking through by not thinking of herself.’ a window. His words are wonder - Tom de Freston’s sketches for ful images for what it is like, to the chapel project fulfil brilliantly come and sit in a chapel, to listen what we need from any backdrop Ruth Padel and think, what one comes to a to an altar. Their images are Ruth Padel is a Fellow of the Royal chapel for – all the things which about the flesh but also how to go Society of Literature and the Zoologi - these altar pieces help us ponder. beyond it. How, as Augustine cal Society of London. She is a prize- ‘Removed from the crowd,’ says, to ‘come to your own mind says Augustine, he and his and go beyond’. How one might winning poet, formerly a Greek scholar mother were ‘resting after the fa - picture ‘the tumult of the flesh si - and recently Chair of the UK Poetry tigues of a long journey.’ His lenced, the soul going beyond it - Society. Her latest poetry collection, mother had been agonized by his self, not thinking of itself.’ The Darwin – A Life in Poems, is a journey apostasy and felt her life fulfilled more you look, the more there is in lyric poems through Darwin’s life when he converted. They dis - to think about what lies ahead, and work. Her non-fiction includes cussed wisdom, ‘just touching her how we live in our bodies and books on Greek tragedy, Greek myth with the whole effort of our our minds, and how we deal with and rock music, tiger conservation and hearts.’ Side by side, looking out the dark. reading modern poetry. 81 DEPOSITION: A NEW INSTALLATION a t C h r i s t ’ s C o l l e g e , C a m b r i d g e

Pablo de Gandia Interviews Tom de Freston Pablo de Gandia of Tablo Arts are remarkable within the scope has curated three de Freston of your opus in that the irony and solo shows, most recently cynical wit is absent. So, why no Exiles at the Brick Lane socks and boxer shorts? Gallery. It was Pablo and the Chaplain who first formulated Tom de Freston: Context. These the idea of the chapel project. paintings must function in a Here Pablo asks Tom some dialogue with the aesthetic and questions relating to the paint - spiritual significance of the chapel. ings and his broader treatment The socks and boxers are a of spirituality. device to strip a character of his Opposite Page: heroism and gravitas, the very Deposition study So, the chapel values I want to remain present in 2009 Pablo de Gandia: Oil on board paintings, I cannot recall another these paintings. 35 x 25cm image which depicts the descent and rise of Christ in such a way. PdG: In other paintings, your This Page: You have succeeded in finding an characters come to life spiritually Last of the seducer appropriate and original way of because their gravitas is shat - 2010 representing the full cycle and tered and you only leave the Oil on Elmwood human drama of the deposition. viewer with a bare vision of 33 x 23cm(approx) However, the chapel paintings humanity. The failure of their

82 heroics is what makes them human. Is this a dimension you see in TdF: No. I don’t want to create a Why this obsession with failure; with humanity in general? body of work which is singular in its the fall? approach or reading. This work is TdF: At points yes; when people not supportive of any institutional TdF : Painting is inherently about convert ideologies into functional form of ideology but searches for failure, particularly contemporary structures, with an institutionalised pathos in the very human themes of painting. In a less cynical, more justification, on moral or spiritual suffering and hope. romanticised way, the chapel paint - grounds. I want to present the struc - ings also play with the tensions ture but to reveal it as bankrupt. present in the very structure of Pablo de Gandia is a Phd candidate painting. PdG: Is there not a contradiction at King’s College London (Interna - between this desire and that in your tional Relations faculty). He is the co PdG: Your characters are often chapel paintings? founder of Tablo Arts. stripped of heroism and spirituality. www.tablo.co.uk.

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Graham Howes From Seeing to Believing? 'Can then our college chapels be to act as a locus for minority made still more useful for the ritual practice, or should it serve spiritual advancement of our - primarily as a 'space' for personal selves and our pupils ?' asked reflection and renewal? Such the Reverend C.A.Swanson, questions are hardly novel, but Fellow and Tutor of Christs, in they represent themselves with 1850. especial relevance when, as at Although posed over a hun - Christs, in 2011, new art work is dred and sixty years ago (as part now incorporated into the existing of an eccentric and intemperate fabric. attack on Great St Mary's, the Here, the track record of most University Church, as a rival Cambridge chapels has been an attraction), his question has uneven, and at times unhappy, equal resonance today. It raises one. For example, at Emmanuel, not only caveats concerning Sidney Sussex, Clare and Trinity the precise role of nominally Hall, artistic input and architec - Anglican college chapels within tural settings have been satisfac - an increasingly pluralist, post- torily elided, with Mannerism Christian, culture, but also larger and Rococo encountering Neo- questions concerning the relative Classicism with varying degrees marginality of Christianity within of success. At Queens, however, Opposite Page: the communal and credal life of the re-setting of a mid-15th Expulsion, Expulsion all Oxbridge colleges. century German triptych in a late 2010 Oil on canvas In the college which nurtured Victorian reredos is surely a 180 x 120cm John Milton, Charles Darwin and mixed blessing, while at King's, Rowan Williams, both questions Rubens' quintessentially Baroque This Page: remain especially acute. Put Adoration remains in uneasy, Study after Rubens differently, should the chapel even dissonant, juxtaposition to 2010 itself primarily embody the its High Perpendicular setting. Pen on paper institutional presence of the A tourist attraction can also 28 x 18cm Established Church, continuing harbour visual discord. Perhaps

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Opposite Page: C Deposition study h r i

2010 s t ’

Oil on board s

36 x 25cm C o l l

This Page: e Deposition study g e

2010 , Pen on paper C a

30 x 20cm m b r i d g e

only at Robinson, where Piper's space, staked out with four baptism and regeneration. If one glass glows numinously amid aus - Corinthian columns on panelled stands at the epicentre of the ante- tere russet brickwork, does an art - pedestals, and the comparative dis - chapel, both works can be viewed work really seem to resonate within order of its contents, which include either simultaneously, or sequen - its own sacred space. a concert piano, a large wooden tially. The effect is extraordinary. At Christ's, the current challenge chest, and a small, undistinguished, Both artists not only give new is especially daunting. Not only is modern icon. A homely, cluttered, dynamism (one is tempted to say the original chapel's 'dim religious communal memory bank. new life) to what was hitherto a light' – that once dissolved Milton Hence, both spaces seem, in rather static, underpowered, almost 'into ecstasies' – still further diffused some ways, uninviting, indeed un - de-sacralized space. The latter is and absorbed by the heavy-duty likely, sites for additional art work, now totally transformed, as is our panelling (Austin, 1701-4) that now and they clearly present serious own experience of it. dominates both chapel and ante- visual challenges to any contempo - Both artists also re-invoke two of chapel, but equally intimidating is rary artist. Yet, against these odds, the most highly charged narrative the powerful post-Restoration rere - something almost miraculous has and symbolic images in the entire dos, adorned not only with coupled taken place. Both segments of the repertoire of Christian iconongra - Corinthian columns, but topped chapel are now transformed by two phy. Although with, one suspects, with UNUM CORPUS ET UNUM distinctive, yet subtly interactive, very different mindsets and using SPIRITUS on its cornice, itself neo-Mannerist statements for a de - differing, yet complementary, media surmounted by a large green and cidedly post-Mannerist generation. (the solid bronze and brass of Caro, gold cartouche dutifully inscribed In the antechapel Anthony Caro's and the delicate tempera of de SURSUM CORDA . immensely powerful sculpture, Freston) they take the viewer far Rarely has the primacy of Word Deposition, immediately confronts beyond mere nostalgia prompted by over Image (so integral to post- one directly across the crowded an evocative temporal narrative, Restoration Protestant aesthetics) rectangle. Its strong trace elements, and towards a confrontation with been visually articulated with such drawn from both Rubens' majestic, something potentially eternal. potent specificity. theatrical Descent from the Cross In this sense both works relate A third visual complication is the in Antwerp, and Rembrandt's to each other not merely by 'presence' (in two senses!) of the tender, haunting, Deposition now re-invoking a shared mythology, extravagant and eye-catching dou - in Munich, effectively project a but by seizing and creating a re - ble memorial of 1684, in black and dramatized Christology which some - newed opportunity (for believer white marble, to Sir Thomas Baines how never topples over into gratu - and non-believer alike) to transform and Sir John Finch. This not only itous melodrama. Its power and an overtly aesthetic experience into abuts the reredos, but its relatively physicality are both corporeal and a potentially religious one. The overt statement of male amitie subliminal. Reverend Swanson would surely amoreuse provides an uncomfort - In the main chapel the two, for - have been delighted! able counterpoint to the unadorned merly blank, panels of the reredos chastity of the reredos itself. now contain Tom de Freston's own Graham Howes is an Emeritus Finally, the antechapel through reworking of two core components Fellow of Trinity Hall, a Trustee which one enters provides a rather of Christian iconography – one of ACE (Art and Christianity disconcerting contrast between (shared with Caro) of Christ's depo - Enquiry), and author of The Art its highly-ordered, near-rectangular, sition, the other of His (and our) of the Sacred (I.B.Tauris, 2007).

86 Pablo de Gandia Interviews Tom de Freston about death

Pablo de Gandia asks some more questions, this ing and the Robert Capa photograph it appropriates time about death in de Freston’s work. is also binary. But I think painting never speaks exclusively within a binary scale, it is often more Pablo de Gandia: Death of an Englishman , despite de fragmentary, a series of relative values. Freston-esque sock and boxers, contains a pathos that closely mimics that which is created in the chapel paint - PdG: Death in your work is often approached through ings. The naked, visceral flesh, the agile yet terminal a form of ridicule that could risk being interpreted as gesture and pose, not to mention the suggested morbid. Why walk this fine line? informalism of the scenario all set in a framework of oppositions. Would you define this relationship as TdF: Ridicule is a useful device to expose the empti - binary, is there a scale in your work in the treatment of ness of meaning, values or pathos in an image. It is the death? exposure of this emptiness which, paradoxically, can open up the sign to gain new significance. It is a TdF: There are qualities that are binary; the semantics cynical wit which seems typically English. of the space, for instance, a dialogue between active and empty space. The relationship between the paint - PdG: You explore death from a detached perspective in 87 DEPOSITION: A NEW INSTALLATION a t C h r i s t ’ s C o l l e g e , C a m b r i d g e

Opposite Page: Death of an Englishman 2010 Oil on canvas 180 x 120cm

This Page: Death of Poirot 2010 Oil on canvas 180 x 120cm a few paintings. Is this an interplay of formative im - narrative values held in the photograph. ages (say, from police investigations) or is it as such the perfect death? PdG: Does a perfect death have to include irony and how does this relate to your treatment of Christ? TdF: The perfect death or the perfect crime? A paint - ing detaches a moment from the temporal se - TdF: No, irony is one device. The chapel paintings quence, and as such makes the cause and effect lack irony, but still function on a play of relative impossible to fully relocate. Some of these images values. The left panel has all the figural mechanics appropriate police photographs, which have that of Christ on the cross, but the cross, ladder, witness strange, passive viewpoint, intended to record in - figures and spatial settings are removed. The two formation free of any dramatic intention. Other im - panels are intended to explore the two sides of ages have this perspective in mind but are scenes death; the weight of flesh slowly descending and that I stage and then record through photography. hope of a rise and spirituality which transcends the In all cases, the relationship between the photo - boundaries of the body. graphic source and the painting is one where the de-contextualised image no longer speaks of the

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Rowan Williams Spirituality in de Freston’s Deposition The decoration of many Oxbridge the theological challenge is college chapels is fairly austere, no less serious: how does this and Christ's is no exception. But particular image suggest that the often it is precisely against a dead body being handled and muted and restrained back - tidied up for burial is not just ground that an artistic work may another cadaver? speak most eloquently, unclut - Van der Weyden's 'echo' is one tered by the merely decorative. way, implying that the pattern That is very clearly what Tom de established in the death of Jesus Freston's panels achieve in this is one that shapes the lives and space where worship has been experiences of those closest to offered for 500 years. him, those who have lived by The theme of the Deposition, faith in him. But there are other the taking down of Jesus' body ways. from the cross, was a regular one De Freston's solution is a for the great painters of the powerful and original one: it is Middle Ages and afterwards. It (put very simply) to juxtapose a posed not only a technical but passive and an active image in a also a theological challenge. physical medium that seems to Technically, there were anatomi - be like deep water. A body drops, cal matters to get right; the sheer passively, losing its controlled interest of visually managing the shape against the resistance of various physical tensions in - the water: the limbs stray, the volved in shifting a dead body head is down. A body rises, push - down from a height. Sometimes ing through the depths and, as it Opposite Page: The Wait of Flesh it allowed a painter – like Van der were, shedding bubbles of breath 2010 Weyden – to do remarkable and trails of light, moving with Oil on canvas things with the composition of immense, almost agonised, 190 x 140cm figures, so that the drooping energy towards the surface of the corpse of the Saviour is visually water. But the contrast between This Page: 'echoed' by the body of the Virgin active and passive is not a crude Deposition study (from triptych) Mary as she faints with grief. But one. The first image also evokes

90 a deliberate journey into darkness, of 'the deep waters of death' where brought up in Swansea. From the limbs having a suggestion of Jesus meets us. 1984-86 he was Dean and walking where you can only feel, Like any Christian shrine, this Chaplain at Clare College, not see, your way. And the effort chapel is centred upon the paradox Cambridge, and then from 1986 and anguish of the upward thrust in of a God who changes the world by to 1992 he was Lady Margaret the second panel reminds us that his passivity, his suffering. Both the Professor of Divinity at Oxford. this action is inseparable from the reality of the suffering and the radi - He served as Bishop of passion, the sacrifice. cal power of the change have to be Monmouth from 1992 and This draws on the whole historic held in mind and heart, and it is this Archbishop of Wales from 2000. association of the death and resur - paradox that is celebrated at Easter rection of Jesus with descent into - which is why it is right that the in - Dr Williams is a Fellow of the watery chaos, the chaos that ex - stallation of these panels should be British Academy and is the au - isted before the Word and the Spirit in the context of this festival, the thor of several books of theol - bring light and life, as recorded in heart of all Christian faith. ogy; he is also a frequent Genesis 1 - and so too the associa - broadcaster. He is married to tion with baptism as our rescue Dr Rowan Williams Jane, a writer and teacher; they from chaos by the descent of Jesus Rowan Williams has been have two children. into these waters. The Church of Archbishop of Canterbury since England's baptismal service speaks 2002. He was born in 1950 and 91 DEPOSITION: A NEW INSTALLATION a t C h r i s t ’ s C o l l e g e , C a m b r i d g e

Jaya Savige Discusses ‘The Seat of Desolation’: Miltonic depth in the work of Tom de Freston [N]ot, please! to resemble From an elevated perspective, sition altarpieces, and in myriad The beasts who repeat the figures in Tom de Freston's other canvasses (e.g. Icarus , themselves,.. The Fall of the Rebel Angels (see Him Who Wanted to Fall ) and next page) might be laid out on monoprints (e.g. Study of Falling ). W.H. Auden, a conveyer-belt, ferried like In The Fall of the Rebel Angels In Praise of Limestone homogenised, factory-produced and Where the Hell Are We? (see bodies for packaging. Read top- next page), two new works to-bottom, they plummet as if completed as part of a Lever - down a sewerage pipe, flushed hulme fellowship, de Freston like refuse from an heavenly transposes his ongoing investi - cistern. gation of this theme into a literary Nine days and nights it takes key, by explicitly responding to for the rebel angels in Milton's Milton's epic. Paradise Lost to plunge ‘head - These canvasses form a long from the Pitch of Heaven’ continuum with the earlier work, through the abyss into the depths but they also mark a crucial, to hell, after their unsuccessful conceptual point of departure. coup against God (I. 50, VI. 871; This can be seen by comparing II.772). Milton's rendition of depth them with a formally similar work, is what the Romantic poets might Fast Judgement (see image this have called sublime, at the limits page), a canvas dominated by an of human comprehensibility. The oppressive sky that clamours word ‘deep’ appears with insis - with copulating and falling bod - tent frequency in Milton's epic, ies, beneath which two figures where it is accompanied by pose on a yellow road – one in a litany of enhancing modifiers the foreground, beckoning the Opposite Page: that emphasise the sublimity viewer; the other facing away and Swimmer of the fall: vast, boundless, hol - prostrate in the distance. 2008 Pen on paper low, abhorred, hoarie, frighted, Whereas the sky-bound motley 29 x 19cm foaming. crew in Fast Judgement remains In his 2009 exhibition, Reflec - essentially inchoate, carnal This Page: tions , Tom de Freston revealed and haphazard, the figures in The Fast Judgment an ongoing concern with the fall Fall of the Rebel Angels and 2009 – the biomechanics of the falling Where the Hell Are We? have Oil on paper body, the eschatalogy of the become hermetically sealed 200 x 150cm fallen spirit or soul – in his Depo - (though problematically so in the

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94 Previous Page, Left: Fall of the Rebel Angels 2010 oil on canvas 200 x 150

Previous Page, Right: Where the Hell are we? 2010 Oil on canvas 200 x 150cm

This Page: An image from Gustave Doré’s Paradise Lost. By kind permission of the Master, Fellows, and Scholars of Christ's College, Cambridge latter), sterilised and, perhaps most is, from side-on, or from above. In underscores his absence in Rebel importantly, serialised; replicable. one sense, then, the idea of depth Angels , which presents a preindi - For de Freston, Milton's hell has is itself the subject of these works, viduated state. Less cadaverous now become ‘flattened, geometri - as de Freston transposes his than his jaundiced minions, he cized, ordered’ - to use the words of concern with the fall not only into a echoes the deposition of Christ, Rosalind Krauss. With a nod to the literary key, but a painterly one. For yet is ultimately modern, ironic, ornamental grammar of William de Freston, Milton simultaneously not quite shrugging but neither Morris' wallpapers, and a wink at evokes the tyranny of the surface embracing the infernal air. These the pop-opacity of Warhol's Marilyn and the chimera of depth, a failed coupsters are truly, utterly screenprints, de Freston's rebel manichean conflict that defines both ‘vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf’ angels are indeed serialised; petri - his vision and his art. of ‘livid flame’ (PL I. 52, 182). fied in a series of infernal pilates And what could be more aesthet - ‘The cistern contains; the foun - poses. They are condemned, like ically endemic, more representa - tain overflows.’ So writes Blake in those figures of divine retribution, tively hellish in an age where the his Proverbs of Hell , and whose Prometheus or Sisyphus, to endure line between surface and depth vision of Hell wrenches all those their abysmal lot in perpetuity; or has, in the eyes of many, become that have gone before – Virgil, like those ‘beasts that repeat them - so utterly obfuscated by rampant Dante, Milton – into modernity, by selves’ that so terrify Auden in In commodity fetishism and political exposing the nature of the dialecti - Praise of Limestone . disinformation? It is worth recalling cal relation itself. In Where the And yet, de Freston inherently that Paradise Lost , which concerns Hell? , de Freston's rebel angels challenges what Krauss calls a civil war (in heaven), was written spill out of their confines, their ‘modern art's will to silence, its during a time of civil war; and that spectral presences haunting the hostility to literature, to narrative, to de Freston, riffing here on the pseudo-margins of the canvas. discourse.’ While he is evidently themes of surface and depth in Taken together, these works com - aware of what Clement Greenberg late 2010, is doing so during a prise a meditation on the dialectics famously called the ‘medium speci - time of civil unrest and the quasi- of opacity and transparency, ficity’ of his art – the material para - Luciferean rebellion (in the name of surface and depth, so pertinent not dox inherent in both the fact of the transparency) of Julian Assange only to the Miltonic fall, to that flatness of the canvas and the and Wikileaks. ‘dreary plain, forlorn and wild, / The perspectival illusion of depth – de Whereas the figures in Rebel seat of desolation, void of light’ Freston neither submits entirely to Angels swivel in a greyish milky- (I. 180-81), but to the artist's own. the siren song of the surface blue through the darker, earthy (ornament or abstraction), nor tones drawn from the Deposition asserts the priority of illusory depth canvases, the palette of Where the Jaya Savige is the author of Late - (perspective); rather, he plays upon Hell is altogether more searing. comers (2005) and Poetry Editor of this tension, holding surface and Here, the fallen writhe in a concoc - The Australian . His poetry appears depth in a suspended (and sus - tion of stinging mustard, turmeric in the Penguin Anthology of penseful), dialectical relationship. and ginger, an eye-wateringly Australian Poetry (2008) and The As we saw at the outset, these radioactive curry-paste built upon Best Australian Poems (2010). He canvases can be read either per - an autumnal ochre base (indeed is a PhD candidate in English and spectivally or as self-consciously the colour of Fall ). Satan's pres - Gates Scholar at Christ's College, flat, aware of their materiality; that ence, central, almost serene, Cambridge.

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Surfacing

by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The fisherman casts his nets wide And weights them, metal glinting in golden light, Flesh shows through fish-bone twine As his catch sways murky deep, silverbacked in sun.

…

So too, when left too deep, the body. Brown, flat, falling back Sinking under the weight of the world and all its sins.

Then On that silent night Holy light.

And so too , right close to the light, Skin seems red, yellow, blue, Or brown, falls back the darkness and Rises up the weight of the Word.

Now Is the time To live naked.

This poem was commissioned by Tom de Freston for this project.

Kiran is a published poet and final year Cambridge student, who edited Ekphrasis , a collection of fifteen poets responding to the work of Tom de Freston. Kiran is currently working on a body of poems relating to Shakespeare’s plays, commissioned by the British Shakespeare Association. Image: Deposition study, 2009, Acrylic on paper, 30 x 20cm 96 Words of commendation from the Chaplain of Christ's College, the Revd Christopher Woods

Commissioning a new art work the house of God. for a place of worship is an The theme of the paintings exciting, yet daunting, project. It engages deeply with the roots demands preparation, planning and history of Christ's: the Col - and enthusiasm from many par - lege is dedicated to our Lord ties. The reredos, or altarpiece, Jesus Christ and the custom of which Tom de Freston has been maintaining a 'feast of title' or working on for some time, in 'patronal festival' is kept in this various guises, is a stark, College on Easter Day itself - dramatic and disturbing fruit of the Day of Resurrection. talent, passion and labour of Of course, Deposition and love. Resurrection are closely en - The implications of such a twined. And in this Chapel, we work are manifold and as so have had the great Caro sculp - often with art, there are endless ture of The Deposition in our possibilities of meaning, inter - midst for ten years. pretation and inspiration in the Now, in 2011 we have the time during which the diptych is de Freston altarpiece: new installed above the altar in reflection for our time on the Christ's College Chapel. human reality of falling to the None of these will become depths of despair, yet rising apparent until after Easter again abundantly to life and Sunday 2011. From that point hope again. on, those who worship, pray, sit, Tom is to be thanked and read, sing, make music or visit praised for his graciousness, this sacred space can engage enthusiasm and above all his with a new creation. A new God-given talent. dynamism and fresh expression of spirituality is made manifest Revd Christopher Woods has with the installation of Deposi - been Chaplain and Director of tion and Resurrection . There studies in Theology of Christ's will be questions, there will be College since 2007. In August intrigue, there will be shock, 2010, Christopher leaves there will be amazement. All of Christ's and will work as the Deposition study (detail) this is good and right and there Church of England's National 2010 is no better a place for such Worship Adviser and Secretary Acrylic on board emotion to be borne out than in of its Liturgical Commission. 35 x 25cm

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