Che Lovelace: The River, Passage, Spirit and The Vision of the Birds
Title: The River, Passage, Spirit and The Vision of the Birds
Artist: Che Lovelace
Location: St James’s Piccadilly, London
Date: 2023
This work was shortlisted for the A+C Award for a permanent art commission within the building or grounds of a place of worship in the UK 2026.
Bryan Biggs, chair of the judging panel for the A+C Award writes:
“In the capital, we visited The River, Passage, Spirit and The Vision of the Birds, by Che Lovelace at St James’s, Piccadilly, installed in 2023 in the entrance to one of Christopher Wren’s finest churches. This set of four paintings was commissioned to honour the eighteenth-century abolitionist Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, who was enslaved as a teenager, brought to London in 1772, and sought baptism at St James’s the following year – the same place, incidentally, where William Blake had been baptised.
Cugoano’s book, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, published in 1787, describes his personal experience of being trafficked at the age of 13 to work on a plantation in Grenada and brought by a merchant to England, where he gained his freedom. He did not however live to see slavery abolished.
For these vibrant paintings, infused with rich colours and bold abstract shapes, Lovelace drew on the lives of the people and the flora and fauna of his native Trinidad. The project was accompanied by a new memorial designed by Cardozo Kindersley and placed near the font where Cugoano was baptised, its inscription including the title of his prophetic book.
The commission was part of St James’s cultural programme and an ongoing series of activities which seek social justice and liberation in relation to anti-racism, the legacies of enslavement, and contested heritage. It has also inspired ongoing visual arts projects including a series of temporary exhibitions in the side chapel at St James’s.”
Further information
Medium: acrylic on board
Permanent display in the narthex
See Lovelace’s paintings on the Ecclesiart map here.
Commissioner: The Rector and PCC of St James’s Piccadilly; Eckow Eshun as Project Curator; and Richard Parry as Creative Director