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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Julian Phelps Allan: Baptistry relief
Sutton Baptist Church was the architect N. F. Cachemaille-Day’s only known non-conformist commission; with its imposing, fortress-like brick exterior and spacious interior it is referred to informally as the ‘Baptist Cathedral’. The interior echoes the churches of German Expressionism with full height pointed arches. The architectural and liturgical centre of the church is the baptistery, against the east wall, with a pool of Hopton Wood stone and a brick reredos under a large window by Christopher Webb of scenes from Pilgrim’s Progress. Presiding over the pool, framed by two dramatic twisted brick columns, is Julian Phelps Allan’s sculpted relief depicting the Baptism of the Ethiopian.
Kate Egawa: Black Madonna and Child of Covid-19 Lockdown
The project for the ‘Black Madonna and Child of Covid-19 Lockdown’ (Our Lady of Kilburn) arose from the community’s experience during COVID lockdown. St Mary’s is a Black majority congregation, with most being women of working age. Many were aware of significant racial and gender differences in the effects COVID had.
Alice Sielle: Stations of the Cross
Small scale linocuts sympathetically framed and placed at regular intervals around the church.
Alice Sielle (b. 1950, British) is predominantly an abstract painter with a wide range of influences from Barnet Newman to Piero della Francesca.
Graham Sutherland: Crucifixion
Graham Sutherland's Crucifixion, unveiled in 1963, was the third he had created for a church and the first and only commission that he received from a Roman Catholic Church, despite being a Catholic himself. It taps another theme found within the revival of sacred art, a focus on the horror of crucifixion. For Sutherland this derives from reflection on the terror inherent in both Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece and the reality of the Holocaust.
Adam Kossowski: Sgraffito murals of the Book of Revelation
Mural covering the walls of St Benet’s Chaplaincy, Queen Mary, University of London.
Adam Kossowski (1905-1986, Polish) was a Polish refugee who quickly made a career in public works of figurative art in Britain.
Shirazeh Houshiary: East window
St Martin in the Fields’ East Window by Shirazeh Houshiary in collaboration with Pip Horne was commissioned as part of major redevelopments within the church and its curtilage.
