Modern Art Brings the Easter Story to Life
It's not every day you go to a pub for a pint or mid-morning coffee and are confronted with an important work of art. Mark Cazalet's West London Stations of the Cross paintings are placed in fifteen pubs and cafes across the Vale of Glamorgan to bring the Easter story close to everyday life.
In past years if you wanted to see the Easter paintings of Mark Cazalet you'd have to visit a cathedral, but this year you can visit a south Wales pub or café and see significant and celebrated contemporary art for free in an everyday setting until Friday 22nd March.
The fifteen paintings show the trial, condemnation, public walk, beating, execution and Resurrection of Jesus, all set in modern London. The scenes in the paintings include Wormwood Scrubs Prison, Portobello Road Market and the Penguin House of London Zoo. London artist Mark Cazalet said, “I felt it was essential to enact the drama within a walking radius of my Ladbroke Grove home” and this current Welsh pubs and cafés project brings the paintings into the streets of Vale of Glamorgan towns of Penarth, Cowbridge and Llantwit Major.
The works can be found in four of Cowbridge’s historic pubs, six cafes in the seaside town of Penarth and scattered amongst shops, cafes and pubs in Llantwit Major where the paintings will finally be gathered together on 24th March for a display through Easter as a complete set.
Shown in graphic detail in the paintings is the compassion of people on the pavements for the condemned Jesus, and also the dispassionate cruel violence inflicted on him in urban scrap land, pedestrian walkways and under motorway flyovers. The paintings bring vivid, shocking portrayals of the workings of everyday violence in the world today and link it to the passion, degradation and transformation of the Easter story.
The popular Penarth cafe The Busy Teapot has moved their ‘Specials Board’ and replaced it with a Cazalet painting. Joint owner Martin Shaw who runs the kitchen at The Busy Teapot said,
“It’s a privilege to have this painting. I really like it. People are welcome to come and see it!”
The Passion paintings will remain for discovery in Vale of Glamorgan venues until Friday March 22nd and then will be on public display at both St Illtud’s Church and The White Hart pub in Llantwit Major from March 24th to April 1st.
Partnering in the project Canon Edwin Counsell from St Illtud’s Church , Llantwit said, “Mark Cazalet’s remarkable Stations of the Cross take the story at the heart of Christian faith and give it a fabulous contemporary twist. Here’s a spoiler alert… Jesus gets crucified on Good Friday! For those who know the story of Holy Week, these paintings are an invitation to view a familiar story through a different lens, or see it lit from a different angle.
“For those who know the Cross only as a piece of jewellery, these paintings free the Christian story from the shackles of ancient history, and place in the here and now. In short, a life event in the history of the world comes to life in the street outside our homes.”
The reason for the dual final venues of church and pub this Easter was explained by Richard Parry who said, “The fourteen traditional Easter story pictures will be presented in the ancient church, the site of which dates back to Celtic times and still today has world class Celtic Crosses on display, but anyone wanting to see the fifteenth Resurrection painting will have to go up the road to the Old White Hart. After all, the pub was the setting of the final act in the original story 2000 years ago!”
The artist Mark Cazalet trained at the Chelsea and Falmouth Colleges of Art and undertook international scholarships before producing large-scale glass and painted works which can be found in Worcester, Manchester and Chelmsford Cathedrals. The West London Stations of The Cross were painted in 1998 and 1999 for a special exhibition in the year 2000 at Bury St Edmunds. The paintings are owned by John and Elizabeth Gibbs who are very pleased to loan the works for public display in towns across south Wales.
The project is the idea and initiative of the New Library in Llantwit Major who is working with St Illtud’s Church in Llantwit Major and Holy Cross Church, Cowbridge to encourage people to explore the paintings.
Cowbridge’s Rev Duncan Ballard said, “The events of Easter transformed human history, changing forever how we approach God. These events echo down through the centuries to today, but all too often we prefer to keep them at an historical distance, at arm’s length. This is why Mark Cazalet’s paintings are so important. They reinterpret Easter for us today, making the events real. By breaking out into the high street they are able to provoke in us again the awe and wonder of Easter.”.”
The paintings are on display at the venues below until March 22nd.
Cowbridge:
THE BEAR HOTEL – painting: Simon of Cyrene
DUKE OF WELLINGTON – painting: Sentenced
HOLY CROSS CHURCH – painting: Falls
THE HORSE & GROOM – painting: Pieta
VALE OF GLAMORGAN INN – painting: Nailed
Penarth:
SID’S BAR & RESTAURANT – painting: Veronica
THE BUSY TEAPOT– painting: Takes Cross
OCHO LOUNGE – painting: Entombed
CAFE 64 – painting: Falls 2
WINDSOR RESTAURANT & TEA ROOMS – painting: Women Weep
FOXY’S DELI – painting: Crucified
Llantwit Major:
CAFE VELO – painting: Meets mother
FILCO SUPERMARKET – painting: Falls 3
ST ILLTUD’S CHURCH – painting: Stripped
OLD WHITE HART – painting: Emmaus
The list online is here: https://www.newlibrary.wales/paintings-tell-easter-story-across-the-vale/