Internationally acclaimed artist at Manchester Cathedral

Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 February 2010 09:48

Manchester Cathedral will be exhibiting Ghislaine Howard’s acclaimed series of monochrome paintings The Stations of The Cross: The Captive Figure during Lent and Easter 2010.

Since their completion in 2000 the series has toured various British Cathedrals to great acclaim. When shown at Gloucester Cathedral, Her Majesty the Queen was presented with a study for ‘The Women of Jerusalem’.

The exhibition will also feature ‘The Empty Tomb’. Painted in 2008, this canvas completes the sequence. It alone is painted in full colour and is set within a steel reliquary. The work suggests the mystery of the Easter story, evoking a sense of absence and loss. The spiritual significance of the piece is suggested by its hierarchical composition and the dramatic balancing of the deepest of darks against the most luminous of lights – it may be the tomb of Christ, but it could also be the empty bed or indeed the empty doorway.

Speaking about the painting Ghislaine said ‘it grew out of a series of drawings that I made of city doorways and arches. I was moved by the traces left behind by the homeless; the tousled blankets and damp cardboard boxes being the only evidence that someone had taken shelter there. I wanted to situate the painting in the reality of lived experience and to bring to this spiritual subject a simple human dimension.”

The Stations have been featured a number of times on television, most recently in BBC 1 documentary, ‘Who Do You Say I Am?’ and were the setting for a major new production of Sir Peter Maxwell Davis’s ‘Vesalii Icones’, to celebrate his seventieth birthday.

The Captive Figure at Manchester Cathedral from Wednesday 17th February until 14th May 2010

They will play a central role in the Cathedral's Easter celebrations. 

Some responses to the paintings

“These significant and powerful works open up opportunities to highlight and explore the issue of torture and the plight of victims of oppression all over the world.” And as one of many visitors seeing the paintings wrote in response to the works, “it hurt my heart. I pray that we learn from this suffering.”

Dan Jones Head of Education for Amnesty International

“Ghislaine Howard’s images are compelling, powerful, and emphatic. They are unusual in that they communicate man’s inhumanity to man to the art lover and lay person alike. These are very important paintings that transcend the limitations of the gallery space to speak to us all.”

Dr. Helen Bamber, (former director of the Medical Foundation for the care of Victims of Torture)

“Ghislaine Howard’s Stations have a passionate roughness that calls out to the viewer the meaning of Christ’s suffering. They seem sublimely right for the pain and confusion of Christ’s Passion.”

Sister Wendy Beckett

 “Howard is well on her way to becoming one of the great humanist artists of our time.”

Zaria Shreef, The Big Issue