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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Victoria Rance: Comforter
St Laurence Church, Catford, is a notable octagonal church built by Ralph Covell in 1968. The east wall behind the freestanding altar presented a problem that for several decades remained unsolved. A plain cloth screen covering the organ pipes formed an unsatisfactory backdrop to the sanctuary, despite an illuminated dalles de verre cross in its centre. The space ‘was an empty vacuum – not even a positive absence – a negative space demanding to be filled’, as Charles Pickstone, the current vicar, has put it. Victoria Rance, an artist based in nearby Deptford, was commissioned in 2008 to produce a work that would solve this problem, with enough visual force to fill and unite the space without distracting from the altar and sanctuary.
Adrian Wiszniewski: The Good Samaritan and The House Built on Rock
Located on opposite walls of the aisles either side of the sanctuary in Liverpool Cathedral are two paintings by Adrian Wiszniewski: The Good Samaritan (south choir aisle) and The House Built on Rock (north choir aisle).
Maggi Hambling: The Winchester Tapestries
Created by Maggi Hambling for the High Altar at Winchester Cathedral, these tapestries, the artist’s first, were dedicated on 7 July 2013. Maggi Hambling collaborated with Ateliers Pinton – a French tapestry workshop in the Aubusson region which has worked with artists such as Picasso, Miro, Leger and Sutherland (for Coventry).
Stephen Owen: Communion table and lectern
Winner of the A+C Art Award for a permanent commission, Stephen Owen’s carved communion table and lectern are powerful symbolic pieces of liturgical furniture.
Chris Gollon: Stations of the Cross
In 2000 Gollon was commissioned to paint 14 Stations of the Cross for the Church of St John on Bethnal Green, a grade one listed building designed by Sir John Soane. This was one of the largest commissions by the Church of England in recent times. Although previously Gollon was not best known for his religious work, the Rector Alan Green explained, "The church of St John on Bethnal Green has had a long-standing involvement with people on the fringes of our society, the sort of people who often figure in Chris' paintings.
Alison Watt: Still
“ … 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.”
Rebecca Hind: Scintilla: the glittering speck
"Scintilla is a visual orchestration of life, made to echo inside the tall paleness of Christ Church Spitalfields. An evocation of landscape and elements that wants to summon the potent majesty of natures shifting energy to the core of Hawkesmoor’s poised linear order."
Nominated by Brian Catling
Bill Viola and Kira Perov: Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)
Intensely theological it addressed big issues of the day and asked questions of us about meaning, life, death and what we would give our lives for.
Tracey Emin: For You
The artists own feminine handwriting - a rare element of Christian iconography - reads 'I Felt You And I Knew You Loved Me'.
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.
Rona Smith: North Elevation
Rona Smith’s North Window panel is constructed from a web of whirling squares suspended in the window alcove. The squares spiral out from a central 'eye' whilst the panel itself curves into the space forming a sculptural arc which echoes the two dimensional pattern.