Chris Gollon’s highly-acclaimed Fourteen Stations of the Cross are unusual since they vary in size, are site-specific and because the artist used his own son as the model for Jesus. They were permanently installed in the Church of St John on Bethnal Green, which is a beautiful grade-one listed church designed by Sir John Soane, located next to the Young V&A Museum. After installation they were blessed by Richard Chartres, Bishop of London.
Chris Gollon’s paintings of the Passion can be viewed during services or just after them: Church of St John on Bethnal Green. Despite the large windows, there is no stained glass in the Church, so Gollon’s paintings often have to compete with very bright sunlight, which they do successfully and bring colour just as stained glass would have done.
The Chris Gollon Estate is held and represented by his gallery, click here for more information: IAP Fine Art
A full-colour catalogue featuring all 14 paintings, with texts by novelist Sara Maitland, and leading art critics may be purchased in the Church or online here: Fourteen Stations of the Cross.
Sara Maitland’s book ‘Stations of the Cross’ (Bloomsbury, London & New York, 2008) is available in a signed collector’s edition of 100 with a ‘Crucifixion’ silkscreen print by Chris Gollon, details here: Special Collectors’ Edition.
“Like Spencer, he dramatises the everyday in contemporary images and, depicting our clumsy, ridiculous ordinariness, brings alive for a modern, clinical audience the ghastly dissonance of this story of good and evil, sacrifice and humanity, answering on its own terms a 21st century culture that regards the heroic as absurd.
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Jackie Wullschläger, Chief Visual Art Critic, “Critic’s Choice” Financial Times
Recently featured in episode one of BBC1’s Gareth Malone’s Easter Passion, where Gareth compared Chris Gollon’s treatment of the Passion to that of Johann Sebastian Bach’s in its modernity.