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Dion Ellis -
Entrance
Dion Ellis was commissioned to create Entrance over the baptismal font of
Portsmouth Cathedral
Les Buckingham wrote: 'At the end of his analysis of Piero della Francesca’s
Baptism of Christ, the art historian Philip Hendy concludes:
Colour and light are here inseparable. In unison they create the atmosphere of
the picture, physical and spiritual; and it is no more possible to distinguish
the physical from the spiritual than it is the colour from the light.1
The twentieth-century artist has come a long way since then. The painstaking
depiction of the Umbrian landscape in paint by Piero della Francesca can now be
captured in thousands of different ways. Reality can be reproduced in its
minutest detail so that each glint of light bouncing off water can be reproduced
in any number of media – photography, cinema, video. If nature contains, as
artist John Ruskin thought, the essence of the spirit, of spirituality itself,
then surely now is the time to observe it.
Dion Ellis’s video installation Entrance is realistic. It might even be said
that it is as realistic as image can be. Its format echoes reality too: a
landscape screen, a viewing experience that is a combination of cinema and
television, a walk-in movie. Western culture is obsessed with different forms of
reality: the ever-popular nature programme takes us inside a lion’s den; human
life, warts and all, confronts viewers of The Royle Family; the entire nation is
transfixed by Big Brother. In the end we do not watch these representations of
reality in search of an ever-increasing closeness to it. We watch them in order
to go beyond reality: to realise that the lion’s life is quite mundane, to gain
insight into the family unit and what makes it tick, for psychological and human
insight into various individuals in Big Brother. In other words, reality is only
the starting point for abstract speculation about the nature of personality, the
complexities of family life, for lions or the Royles.
It must not be forgotten that both reality and spiritual realisation are humanly
wrought, and that the artist brings a set of skills, intentions and imagination
to the quest to understand reality. Entrance is a slow-motion video projection
of a waterfall. It was inspired by many different things: readings about the
significance of water for the human physical and spiritual condition, the beauty
of waterfalls in nature, and the specific beauty of places like the Becka and
Canonteign Falls in Dartmoor. In conceiving the work for Portsmouth Cathedral,
Ellis took her cue from the baptismal font, which occupies a central position on
the main access of the Church, and is thus different from other places of
worship. The artist read the words of St Cyril of Jerusalem that run round the
edge of the font, drawing inspiration from them.
...down into the water it was like night and you could see nothing: but when you
came up again it was like finding yourself in the day. That one moment was your
death and your birth: that saving water was both your grave and your mother.
It is important to ask how much Ellis’s slice of reality takes us beyond
ourselves, makes us question what is depicted and gives us insight into the
meaning of water and rocks glistening in the sunlight. Entrance points us back
towards reality itself, towards the ‘liquid vastness, the triumph of motion, of
momentum over the immovable’2 and to realise that the ‘narratives of our
mortality, from birth to death, are visited frequently through the medium of
water, the element which sustains life’.3 In directing the viewer back to
reality, Ellis opens up the realm of the spirit.'
1. Philip Hendy, Piero della Francesca and the Early Renaissance, Weidenfeld and
Nicholson 1968, p. 71. 2. Poem by Burton quoted in Edward C. Rashleigh, Among
the Waterfalls of the World, Jarrolds, 1935, p. 53. 3. The Art of Bill Viola, A
Theological Reflection, Bill Viola Essay by David Jasper in The Messenger.
Catalogue published by The Chaplaincy to the Arts and Recreation in North East
England, ed F. Sparrow, p. 13.
Entrance was exhibited at Portsmouth Cathedral from
27th October to 17th December 2000
Ellis's work was part of the Art 2000 Projects in Sacred Places where five
arrtists were curator selected, in collaboration, with the venues, to make new
works for five major churches in the south of England. This was important
because it reflected Art and Sacred Places's (then known as Art 2000) desire to
build a new partnership between the church and artists and, in doing so, to
match the best contemporary standards and practice for art events.
The Catalogue for Art 2000 Projects in Sacred Places containing text
contributions by Sacha Craddock and Father Friedhelm Mennekes is available from
Art and Sacred Places
Project funders and supporters included: The Arts Council, The Jerwood
Charitable Foundation, The Jerusalem Trust, The National Lottery Millennium
Festival Fund, Southern Arts, South East Arts
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