Alison Watt: Still
Title: Still
Artist: Alison Watt (b. 1965, British)
Location: Memorial Chapel, Old St Paul’s, Edinburgh (Scottish Episcopal Church)
Date: 2004
Still won the ACE Award for a Commissioned Artwork in Ecclesiastical Space in 2005. Richard Holloway writes:
‘I have two reasons for nominating Alison Watt’s astonishing painting, Still, for this award. It hangs in the Warriors’ Chapel in Old St Paul’s Church, built as a memorial to the many young men from the parish who died in World War I. The chapel itself is devastating in its simplicity and poignancy, and was a complete statement in itself that seemed proof against any further embellishment – until Alison Watt found it. She was moved by the space and conceived a work of art that seemed, in the result, an inevitable complement to what was already complete. There is a sense of latency and loss in the painting; but it also establishes a feeling of hope, a sense that, against all hope, hope yet remains. It also speaks a quite personal word to me, and many like me in today’s world, for whom the old ways of speaking about God have lost their power and immediacy. Still suggests an absence that is strangely like a presence.’ (Richard Holloway, Chair of the Scottish Arts Council and former Bishop of Edinburgh)
In 2000 Alison Watt (b. 1965, British) became the youngest artist to be offered a solo exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art with an exhibition called ‘Shift’. For Still, Alison Watt was awarded the 2005 ACE Award for a ‘Commissioned Artwork in Ecclesiastical Space’. Watt was artist in residence at The National Gallery London 2006–8. For this residency she worked within the gallery, inspired by particular items from the collection. The culmination of her residency was the exhibition ‘Phantom’.
‘I sat in the Warrior Chapel for an hour, not quite overcome with the same “feeling of overwhelming sadness” that Watt herself felt in the chapel but awed by the loss of possibility and the seeming beauty of rest. I sat alone, in front of a truly memorable work of art.’ (Nicholas Cranfield, in reference to the piece Still, Art & Christianity 40)
Further Information
Medium: Oil painting
Size: 12 x 12ft
Permanent display
See Watt’s Still on the Ecclesiart map here.
Commissioner: PCC of Old St Paul’s Edinburgh
Related A&C journal article(s): Article by Nicholas Cranfield - Art and Christianity 40.