Exeter! Spirit Justice!

The Spirit Justice Tour has begun, I am delighted to say. The minister and officers of Southernhay United Reformed Church were incredibly prepared and deeply welcomeing for the first stop on this tour, with the well lit windowed foyer turning into a lovely gallery. This exhibition in a busy city centre is raising funds for Anti-Racist charities and I’m delighted to say that prints were sold at the opening to help the Plymouth and Devon Racial Equality Council. In other venues, churches will make their charity connection of choice and 40% of sales will go to that chosen charity. One of the paintings from this exhibition, I Am Your Neighbour, is going on after the exhibition to live at DARE to support asylum seekers, refugees, their work and their workers. I am so very pleased.

Part of the Spirit Justice Exhibition

St Asaph's Cathedral is stunning

What a stunning place tor the Open to All Exhibition. St Asaph’s is the smallest Cathedral in Wales in one of the smallest cities. Yet, the welcome is huge and the open arms for anyone and everyone is an enormous hug of support. Open every day, the Cathedral is open for visitors who can see much about prayer and spirituality alongside the building and people’s historic difficult relationship with England; yet, they can see so very much to let them know that they can find space and hope in this sanctified space. This exhibition sits well, helping the church, like Coventry Cathedral, say what it wants to say for itself. The more this tour goes on, the more I realise that Open Table Network and my artwork are in each venue because that church or cathedral wants to reinforce what it is already proclaiming – good news for all.   This is profoundly hopeful when much of the media wants us to see otherwise. This was the point of the tour and I’m delighted that this has been so welcomed.  Money is being raised for the Open Table Network from artwork sales and that means that advocacy for open churches is able to continue. Hurrah and hurrah.  

One, Am I Free, I Don’t Know Yet and Nativity Tancred

Points in the bright transept

The Unfolding

Coventry's gorgeous sale display

I asked Coventry Cathedral if I could sell prints and postcards from their shop - and they said yes! They even dismissed the customary shop overhead so that there would be more to share with the Open Table Network. Not only did they display the work for the shop, they made a gorgeous display for it! There is still just time to visit today and time tomorrow morning. But by after lunch, the exhibition will be folded away, tucked into Abi for the next trip. St Asaph’s, here we come!

How do you encapsulate that feeling of discomfort and also longing that can be found in the in-between?

The Open to All Exhibition of my artwork is in partnership with the Open Table Network, a charity dedicated to helping churches open spaces for LGBTQI+ people. Peter Jones, one of the Trustees, came to the Coventry part of the tour to represent the charity. These are Peter’s words of experience of it, answering the question put in this blog title:

This was the central question in my mind when I encountered Elizabeth Gray-King's work at Coventry Cathedral through the Open To All exhibition in partnership with the Open Table Network, for whom I am a trustee. Elizabeth has put together a thought provoking collection of her artwork which reflects the diversity of human life, in subtle and yet exposing ways. Much of her work plays with materials and the idea of becoming, with several pieces (including the gorgeous and compelling "Nativity Tancred") showing visible signs of being 'in progress', whether it be through canvas stretched over window frames, or leaving parts exposed and unprimed. For me as a queer, trans man and Christian, encountering Elizabeth's work fostered in me a new and at times conflicted sense of visibility. I found her art inviting me to look at myself, my identity, and my current conflicts through this unfinished, becoming, in-progress and in-between way. Instead of feeling the pressure and demand to resolve things I found my time at Coventry Cathedral and encountering her work to be a space that held me tenderly as unresolved. To be in such an exposing and yet awe inspiring place as Coventry Cathedral, with its dedication to reconciliation (something I have a complex relationship to as for many years I was hounded to reconcile my queerness and my faith), I found myself invited in by Elizabeth's work. In between the space of the cathedral and the stretched canvas, I found myself unexpectedly and somehow tenderly held, with my inner conflicts acknowledged and seen, and yet also soothed for a while. For me this is the wonderful overlap between the art and vision of Elizabeth and the Open Table Network, that within these spaces of becoming, that are so often filled with discomfort, there is opportunity for connection; to find a sense of belonging as you are, without needing to be resolved or finished. Through Elizabeth's gentle and honest depictions of diversity, inclusivity, and becoming, I found a gentle encounter with the Spirit I had been longing for and I was invited to just be and see myself as I am. I felt seen. I am grateful to have spent a day encountering such a precious and tender form of genuine visibility and have been thinking about it ever since