Ecclesiart is an online project that raises awareness of significant works of modern and contemporary art since 1920 in UK churches and cathedrals.
The selected works represent the diversity of high quality church commissions and reflect developments in artistic practice and ecclesiastical art and design. You can explore the collection using the tiles below or by using the Ecclesiart map.
We seek to encourage increased responsibility towards works which may be under-appreciated or at risk and hope that this selection of works provides inspiring and challenging examples of art in churches useful to any parish or individual wishing to commission a new work.
We welcome nominations of new works to be added to Ecclesiart. Please email us with a short text about why you think a work of art should be included with a short theological reflection on the work and its context (no longer than 150 words) and if possible please include images. Please note that we do not accept nominations from artists for their own work.
All permanent works shortlisted for the Award for Art in a Religious Context are added to Ecclesiart. For all other nominations, the Director and trustees of Art and Christianity reserve the right to select works which they determine as meeting the criteria of aptness to context, artistic and technical merit and appropriate theological meaning.
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F X Velarde and Herbert Tyson Smith: Baptismal font
The opening of English Martyrs RC church in 1953 marked the completion of F X Velarde’s (1897–1960) most ambitious post-war building. An expressionist brick basilica filled with colour and decorative elements; not added but embedded as intrinsic aspects of the architecture. As with all Velarde’s churches the detail was tightly controlled, work with artists being a collaboration. The most successful and longest of these collaborations was with the sculptor Herbert Tyson Smith (1883–1972).