James Hugonin: Contrary Rhythm
Title: Contrary Rhythm
Artist: James Hugonin (b. 1950, British)
Location: St John’s, Healey (C of E)
Date: 2010
This work was joint winner, along with Anne Vibeke Mou’s window for the same church, of the 2011 ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context.
St John’s, a nineteenth-century parish church in Healey, Northumberland, has a history of fine and unusual stained glass: of its fan-shaped rose window the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner said that it ‘must be seen to be believed’, and it contains a series of windows depicting scenes from the life of St Cuthbert in a modernist style, by a Northumbrian artist, Leonard Evetts. In 2008 two new windows were commissioned of the contemporary artists Anne Vibeke Mou and James Hugonin, both abstract, as objects of contemplation.
Hugonin’s window, made by the German studio that produced Gerhard Richter’s abstract window for Cologne Cathedral, combines traditional methods and modern techniques. It is made of 2160 pieces of handblown glass arranged in an abstract pattern, suspended between two sheets of clear, gridded glass. The 28 colours, following a ‘score’ created by Hugonin, form cascading patterns.
‘In St John’s Church, Healey, Northumberland, the Healey Windows by Anne Vibeke Mou and James Hugonin – very different in conception – form one commission in this remote village church. They are a memorial to two parishioners… The brief asked for windows which would contrast with the narrative style of earlier glass in the church. The artists were to achieve “meditative power, poise and stillness”. … We found a depth of texture to both the new windows which would draw people in and be a real challenge for visitors and pilgrims.’ (The Very Revd Nicholas Frayling, Chair of the judging panel for the ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context, 2011)
James Hugonin (b. 1950, British) was born in Barnard Castle and studied at Winchester School of Art, West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham and at Chelsea School of Art, where he later taught. Since the 1980s he has lived and worked in the Cheviot Hills in Northumberland. In 2011, the year after the installation of the Healey windows, he was shortlisted for the Northern Art Prize. Hugonin’s paintings evoke rhythm and sensation through a meticulous working of colour on a grid. His most recent exhibition was a major solo show at the Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh.
Further Information
Medium: Lamberts glass, clear glass, lead border
Permanent display
See James Hugonin’s Contrary Rhythm on the Ecclesiart map here.
Commissioner: James Warde-Aldam
Other works of modern and contemporary art in St John’s, Healey: windows (1955), Leonard Evetts; window (2010), Anne Vibeke Mou.
For further comment on the stained glass see Visit Stained Glass, which is an online showcase for some of Britain’s finest stained glass windows.