Sydney
29 June 2003
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‘Unethical’
to kill an embryo
Roll on, Cologne
And
they’re racing ... to help Vinnies
‘Renewal
of my faith’
Seminar ‘rekindles Bible
fire’
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The Catholic Weekly- Spiritual tension
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Jesus Christ,
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Parents’ acts
inspired Sr Huyen
Religion, art ‘a
very powerful mix’
Classic
rite controversial, but ‘a jewel’
Real
feelings of life and faith
Bishop Peter
Ingham’s message
Clergy-principals’
conference day
Students share justice
issues
New team looks at needs
New director of vocations
Vocation
Awareness Diocesan Poster Competition
Diocesan
catechists train
Gothic paradise -
the legacy of Pugin
Religion, art ‘a very powerful mix’
Chantelle Davison, from Year 12 at De La Salle College,
Cronulla, in 2002,
with her prize-winning painting Why? Why Not?
Photographs by Suzanne Lowe
Religion
and art are a very powerful mix, says Cardinal Edward Clancy, former Archbishop
of Sydney.
Every culture expresses itself much more eloquently in its art.
“Art lives on when everything else passes,” he said.
“It will outlive technology.
“The other factor that expresses a culture is religion.
“And when you put religion and art together you have a very powerful mix.”
The cardinal was speaking at the fourth annual Sydney Catholic Secondary Schools Religious Art Exhibition, held in the Australian Catholic University (ACU) Gallery at Strathfield.
This year there were more than 50 entrants from 20 Catholic secondary schools in the competition, which provides students from Years 7-12 with an opportunity to explore religious and spiritual ideas through their art.
One of the judges, Sr Rosemary Crumlin, said the works showed great insight and many had a strong call to justice.
First
prize, the Clancy Award, was won by Carl Coxall, a Year 12 student in 2002 at
Marist College, Kogarah, who said his sculpture, Spiritual Code, expressed his
views about the
progress of technology and the decline in meaning in many people’s
lives.
Using a variety of materials including wood, metal, plaster and parts of a computer, Carl’s series of wooden boxes depict entrapment.
“I wanted to show how things have changed since wood used to dominate,” he said, “how people have changed their values and how we think computers will make us better but perhaps we were better off with the old ways and wood.
“The rise of computer technology has given rise to an increase in the ability of humans to communicate with each other quickly and over vast distances.
“And, yet, with so much opportunity
to talk it seems that more than ever meaning is lacking.”
The message is not
all bleak in Carl’s work.
“Computers are simple tools,” he says. “It is how we use them more than what they are that determines whether they are good or ill.
“So the opportunity remains for a new use for technology, the spreading of a spiritual code, where the collision of age-old wisdom and modern invention may lead humanity towards a more enlightened age.
“This collision of old and new, and the spiritual potential of the machine, are made manifest through my works, the physical embodiment of the ‘spiritual code’.”
Second prize-winner Vincent Botton, of Holy Cross College, Ryde, says he finds art a good form of self expression.
In his colourful and expressive series of four paintings, The Image of My Mind, he uses lines, swirls, angles, textures and colour to express various thoughts, ideas and feelings.
“They resemble the paths I have to take and the knots in life that you just can’t seem to get out of,” said Vincent.
The colours in Vincent’s paintings represent positive and negative aspects of his mind. At times they also blend in and fade out, depicting more neutral or ambivalent attitudes or feelings.
His art teacher, Jenny Tighe, says Holy Cross College makes the art competition a focus every year.
“We start by looking at lots of different religious images, and reading stories from the Bible and other religious writings,” she says.
“After the boys have done some reading and thinking about general religious and spiritual themes, we encourage them to express what is on their mind in their work.”
Other winners are: Third prize, Chantelle Davison, De La Salle College, Cronulla; Cathedral Award, Nicholas Rawson, Marist College North Shore; ACU awards, Leila Kanann, Holy Spirit College, Lakemba; Kepu Talanoa, De La Salle College, Ashfield; Hannah Harmey, St Ursula’s College, Kingsgrove; and Abigail Gayla, Holy Spirit College, Lakemba.