A D V E N T
Bearable Mystery of Anticipated Birth
1 – 25 December 2013
Liverpool Hope Chapel, Liverpool Hope University,
Hope Park, L16 9JD
Year after year, Christians gather around the Advent wreath
bringing their longings for Emmanuel, the God-is-with-us, praying to be
prepared for the coming again of the Messiah, testifying to the faithfulness of
God through the years, and bearing the sorrows of the present cross so as to
share in its triumph. This communal rite is a pro-active anticipation of Christmas
being awaited in Advent.
This year, Liverpool Hope University Chaplaincy through Fr.
Stephen Pritchard, Associate Dean (Hope Residential Life and Chaplaincy) has
commissioned the priest and artist Jason Dy, SJ to make the Advent Wreath at
Hope Chapel.
C H R I S T M A S
Up is Down, Down is Up
5 January – 2 February 2014
St. Margaret’s Church, Princes Road,
Liverpool, L8 1TG
The Mission in the Economy (MitE), chaplaincy providers in
North West, UK, together with the Parish Church of St. Margaret of Antioch, an
Anglican church built in the mid-19th Century, collaborates
with Filipino Jesuit Priest and Contemporary Christian Artist in the site
specific installation work entitled “Up is Down, Down is Up.” This work is set
up in the former chancel (choir) area of the newly refurbished church of St.
Margaret’s acting as an alternative chandelier with its seven 40-42 watts LED
clear bulbs.
This installation is part of “The Real Christmas,” an annual
participative Christmas appeal for prayer intentions during the Advent as well
as Christmas season that culminates in an ecumenical prayer service and
thanksgiving dubbed as “Prayers of the City,” organized by the Liverpool City
Centre Chaplaincy.
Witnessing the participants of this bidding prayer appeal
writing their personal desires on Christmas tree décor paper tags and hanging
them on the barren branches of some winter tree, Dy was inspired to create a
three-layered work exploring the paradox of divine revelation, incorporating an
innocence of child’s play, and offering a communion in secular urban space.
The upside-down Christmas tree formation of suspended
colored, glittering, and hand-made prayer tags proposes a different view of
beholding its mystery, perhaps as G.K. Chesterton suggests of viewing it by
“standing on one’s head.” According to Horacio de la Costa, SJ in his homily:
“Chesterton said it for us all: the only way to view
Christmas properly is to stand on one’s head. Was there ever a home more
topsy-turvy than Christmas, the cave where Christ was born? For here, suddenly,
in the very heart of earth, is heaven; down is up, and up is down; the angels
look down on the God who made them, and God looks up to the things he made.”
The over-all installation is reminiscent of the popular
children’s game pabitin (literally, suspended, for grabs) as
known in Dy’s local Filipino culture. Toys, candies and other goodies are
strung suspended on bamboo lattice for children to freely grab. Could
this allude to human desires suspended on faith (as represented by nylon
threads bearing its light weight) or divine providence buoying them up (as
suggested by the aroma of incense rising from the earthen clay pot)? Or just
really a child’s innocent try to either enjoy the play or continue the plea?
However ephemeral and industrial the materials employed by
Dy, it is worth discovering the “linking element, principle of agglutination”
in his installation as suggested by Nicolas Bourriaud beyond the artist’s usage
of this kind of material form.
Viewing by appointment. For walk-ins, the church is open
on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: from 9:30 AM to
10:00 AM Sunday: from 9:30 PM to 11:30 AM
Photographs taken by Rafael Cammayo
L E N T
Forty
40-day Durational and
Autobiographical Documentation/Performative Art Project
5 March - 17 April 2014
Jesuit Presbytery, St.
Francis Xavier's Church
Salisbury St., Liverpool L3
8DR
As the Lenten observance commenced with Ash Wednesday,
whereby the Christian faithful queue to be imposed with ashes and are reminded
of their mortality and frailty as well as the paschal mystery and divine mercy,
Jason Dy, SJ, in his new art initiative entitledForty, continues his
interest art and religion interface. In his attempt in exploring their common
ground, Dy engages the Christian traditions with various communities in his
creative practice as an artist and employs site-specific art collaborations in
his pastoral ministry as a priest.
As the title of the exhibition suggests, forty is the number
of days of Dy’s exploration into a more solitary pilgrimage of Lent. This
durational and autobiographical documentation/perfomative art initiative,
though created within the confines on the pages of a square sketchbook, is not
a deviation of the artist’s usual way of informing his art practice through collaborative
art in public spaces. It is more of a subtle performance of the everyday
engagement with people, events, places and objects with his intent of searching
for the sublime, either in its grand and/or terrible manifestations, in Rudolf
Otto’s sense of mysteriumtremendum, in the mundane. But is this
possible?
Not for sure, but Dy insists that at the end of the day,
distilling residuals of these encounters (whatever form they may take e.g. a
prayer, an insight, a found object, a feeling, an aura, a dialogue, etc.) are
documented in mixed media drawings regarded as daily journal entries. For him,
these entries attempt to document the steps/missteps of the pilgrim on the road
as he pays close attention to the inner stirrings of his person triggered by the
ineffable presence (or its nonpresence). As a religious, it is a spiritual
journey into the desert with his God. It is one of seeking the “wounded beauty
that saves” as Fyodor Dosteovsky suggests in The Idiot.
These documents and processes maybe Dy’s “itinerary more
than a map” (Miwon Kwon, 2002, 29) as henavigates into the road to Calvary,
cross and an empty tomb. It could also be a sort of anticipation of the dawn of
Easter Sunday.
Some of the images may be posted on-line in Dy’s social
network but most of it will be mainly bounded on the pages of the
sketchbook kept in private (but awaiting for an opportune time for public
display).
E A S T E R
Breakfast By The Lake
Two Sites Specific Installation
Site 1
St. Francis Xavier's Church
Salisbury St., Liverpool L3 8DR
19-20 April 2014
Site 2
Two Painted Wrought Iron Stands, Bisque Fired Clay on
Aluminum Rod, Charcoal, Coal, Pebbles, Found Objects, Grass on Polypropylene
Woven Floor Mat
Hope Park, Liverpool L16 9JD
Most Easter gardens in churches have always been depicted as
an open cave with a rock rolled on the side or an empty cross drape with white
cloth. These depictions allude to the account of the first witnesses of an
empty tomb and the incidents surrounding the first eastern morn as recorded in
the Bible and as passed on in the Christian tradition.
In his recent simultaneous art installations at St. Francis
Xavier’s Church and Liverpool Hope University Chapel, Jason Dy, SJ proposes
another view of an Easter garden from Johannine post-resurrection account
(21:1-25) of Jesus’ apparition to his disciples in the Lake of Gennesaret (or
Lake Tiberias).
Jutting out from the circular lump of charcoal, a pair of
painted welded iron bears the suspended bisque dried clay fish (inscribed with texts
either from direct quotation of John’s Gospel or paraphrased dialogue of Peter
and Jesus). The graduated colors of black, red, yellow and gold suggest the
transformation of life’s dark despairing to illuminating joy—reflecting
Christ’s triumph over death. The Zen-like lake-scape of pebbles, found
objects and lakeside grass provided a backdrop for a poignant scene of
disciples fishing in vain at night, of hauling a net full of fish at the
suggestion of unrecognized Risen Lord at dawn, of Jesus preparing breakfast
consisting of charcoal grilled fish and bread in the morning, and of Peter
being questioned three times on his love for the Christ whom he denied thrice.
In a way, Dy presents in his installation an essay on
negation and faith-conviction as well as site and interaction. Like Paul Thek,
Dy has been engaging the church’s religious rituals as a site for his
installation works. This Easter garden completes his engagement with the
Christian liturgical seasons from Advent, Christmas to Lent. He invites
the viewers to take a walk around and enter into the tableau of apparition,
communion and mission.
Though his installation negates from the conventional Easter
garden, he nonetheless keeps the faith-conviction of narrative of the
resurrection offering the Christian theme of ineffable love that overcomes the
evil of the cross and the curse of death.
In another sense, Dy seems to highlight the idea of food for
spiritual nourishment. Woven palm fronds shaped like hearts have provided
another layer of meaning. This additional element reconnects him to his local
tradition of woven puso as container of cooked rice as staple
side dish with the grilled fish. Here, he taps into the theological insight of
artist and theologian Masao Takenaka that God as rice, as bread in the western
world, in Japanese culture. As for Korean poet Kim Chi-ha:
Heaven is rice,
When we eat and swallow rice,
Heaven dwells in our body.
Indeed, Dy offers a food for thought and of soul in this
Easter season especially for the parishioners of SFX Church and participants of
the Association for Catholic Institutes for the Study of Education (ACISE) at
Liverpool Hope University.
First two photographs taken by Rafael Cammayo
First two photographs taken by Rafael Cammayo
O R D I N A R Y T I M E
Flores de Mayo
These site-specific installations are created during the
engagement with the Santacruzan organised by the Filipino communities in
Ipswich, Norwich and Merseyside Area (Liverpool, Whiston and Fasakerley).
St. Luke’s Church (The Bombed Out Church)
Leece Street, Liverpool, Merseyside L1 2TR
31 May – 21 June 2014
Our Lady and St. Walstan's Catholic Church
Costessey, Norwich, Norfolk NR8 5AA
24 May 2014
St Pancras Catholic Church
1 Orwell Place, Ipswich, Suffolk IP4 1BD
25 May 2014
In the Philippines the month of May is dedicated to
commemorating Marian devotion known as Flores De Mayo.
Several Filipino communities in Merseyside (Liverpool,
Fasakerley and Whiston), Norwich and Ipswich recently held their
respective Flores De Mayo activities. These programs varied from
communal recitation of the rosary, the Eucharistic celebration in honour of
Mary to the traditional procession of the Santacruzan.
Philippine artist Jason Dy, SJ participated in the
respective Flores De Mayo activities with these various Filipino
communities in the UK. As a priest, he led them in prayer and devotion by
presiding at their religious rites. As an artist, he collaborated with them in
filling up barren spaces with potted plant blooms.
Site-specific interventions have revived lost spaces, one of
which was the backyard at Our Lady and St. Walstan’s Church. This forgotten
space cleared of grass and adorned with a tree and derelict plaster statue
became a promising flower garden. On another site, colourful blossoms placed on
the mound of the century-old wooden crucifix contrasted with a grey concrete
ground at St. Pancras’ Church.
Initially, at St. Luke’s (also known as the bombed out
church), a corner was filled with a cluster of bamboo canes with synthetic
sunflowers comprising complete beads of the rosary used during prayer services Flores
De Mayo activity held last May 31.
Inspired by these engagements on how his compatriots
practiced their Filipino religious culture in UK, Dy conceptualized a
participative art installation project by filling the whole nave-garden of the
church with bamboo canes and synthetic sunflowers. He pounded more than 200
pieces of 90-cm bamboo canes on the ground and uniformly lined them up in
interspersed rows. Visitors were requested to insert the flowers at the tip of
the thin poles and invited to make a wish, say a prayer or offer them to/for
somebody.
This art project is Dy’s attempt of synthesizing his
engagement with the local Filipino communities he met here in UK. For
him, continuing these homegrown popular devotions in foreign land signified a
longing of some Filipinos to root themselves in their inherited religious
traditions as well as their attempt to transplant these in a new context for
succeeding generations to value. This project is an art intervention
articulating Filipinos uprooting experience, transplanting and blossoming both
as a community and as a church.
The visitors are invited to walk around the field of
assembled sunflower plants, to ponder on local traditions such as Flores
de Mayo being continued abroad, and to consider the interplay between
religion and culture within in popular devotions.
Special Thanks to:
Ambrose Reynolds, Friends of the Bombed Out Church, Filipino
Communities in Ipswich, Norwich, Merseyside area (Liverpool, Whiston,
Fasakerley and Blackpool), UK and Philippine Jesuit Provinces, St. Francis
Xavier’s Church, Art in Liverpool, Faculty and Staff of Liverpool Hope
University Fine and Applied Arts Department, MA in Creative Practice 2013-14
Colleagues, Independents Liverpool Biennial, Circuit Studios
