Religious Studies

Christological Constuction: Dogma

Christological Construction:
Dogma

Text in the centre section 
of this piece is taken 
from Karl Barth's 
Church Dogmatics.







​Artist Statement
The works in this exhibition are related to research undertaken for my Master of Theological Studies thesis. In that work I focus on 'the artist as theologian', exploring the role of art in various theological contexts. 
​
While some of the works in this exhibit may be considered beautiful, my fundamental motivation is not aesthetic but intellectual - I am interested in artistic inquiry into the Christian religion. Neither have these images been created for devotion or spiritual edification; they represent investigations into some of the challenges experienced by contemporary Christianity.

Adopting the conceptually-based practice of incorporating text into visual art, I have used pages torn from various Christian Bibles to highlight differences between literal and metaphorical approaches to Scripture. In other works I incorporate traditional Christian iconography along with handwritten text copied from the Bible and other historical sources (such documents written by Theodore of Studios [729-856] and Karl Barth [1886-1968]), to represent the tension between orthodox and postmodern approaches to contemporary Christianity.

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Christological Construction: Postmodernism. The symbols stamped into each section of the cross are taken from a variety of religious and pagan sources; The center is left open to represent the postmodern claim of no universal truth.

Christological Construction: Feminism Biblical text has been applied to the figure and the 'cross' is contructed from chicken-wire, a material that can be easily reshaped.

Feminism, detail