"Deposition - Resurrection"

Easter Sunday (the designated Feast Day of the College), 24 April 2011, was a very special occasion for Christ’s College Chapel, as it unveiled a new altar reredos by the 2010-2011 Leverhulme Artist in Residence Tom de Freston.  The unveiling of this new and inspiring work is the fruit of an exciting and developing collaboration.

The service at which the reredos was unveiled was Choral Evensong with music by the College Choir.  The Chaplain preached the sermon and in the course of the service, there was a short conversation between the Chaplain and Tom de Freston about the work of art.

Viewing the Reredos and the Chapel

Unless the Chapel is closed for weddings, baptisms or other College services, visitors are welcome to the College Chapel at any time when the College is open. Please speak to the Porters in the Porters' Lodge for any information. During 2012-13, the De Freston altarpiece will be in chapel during vacations, and for the first few days of each term, but taken down for the majority of term-time. Please contact the chaplain if you wish to know more.

Interpreting the Reredos

written by ©Rowan Williams, Lambeth Palace, 2011

The decoration of many Oxbridge college chapels is fairly austere, and Christ's is no exception. But often it is precisely against a muted and restrained background that an artistic work may speak most eloquently, uncluttered by the merely decorative.

That is very clearly what Tom de Freston's panels achieve in this space where worship has been offered for 500 years. The theme of the Deposition, the taking down of Jesus' body from the cross, was a regular one for the great painters of the Middle Ages and afterwards.

De Freston's solution is a powerful and original one: it is (put very simply) to juxtapose a passive and an active image in a physical medium that seems to be like deep water. A body drops (the left hand panel), passively, losing its controlled shape against the resistance of the water: the limbs stray, the head is down. A body rises (the right hand panel), pushing through the depths and, as it were, shedding bubbles of breath and trails of light, moving with immense, almost agonised, energy towards the surface of the water. But the contrast between active and passive is not a crude one. The first image also evokes a deliberate journey into darkness, the limbs having a suggestion of walking where you can only feel, not see, your way. And the effort and anguish of the upward thrust in the second panel reminds us that this action is inseparable from the passion, the sacrifice.

This draws on the whole historic association of the death and resurrection of Jesus with descent into watery chaos, the chaos that existed before the Word and the Spirit bring light and life, as recorded in Genesis 1 - and so too the association with baptism as our rescue from chaos by the descent of Jesus into these waters. The Church of England's baptismal service speaks of 'the deep waters of death' where Jesus meets us. Like any Christian shrine, this chapel is centred upon the paradox of a God who changes the world by his passivity, his suffering. Both the reality of the suffering and the radical power of the change have to be held in mind and heart, and it is this paradox that is celebrated at Easter - which is why it is right that the installation of these panels should be in the context of this festival, the heart of all Christian faith.

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The De Freston altarpiece is new reflection for our time on the human reality of falling to the depths of despair, yet rising again abundantly to life and hope again.

The two canvasses are intended to offer a binary narrative, one of rise and fall. They are made with the very particular demands of the Chapel in mind, and will hopefully provide a visual and spiritual fulcrum to the space.

A catalogue has been published by Green Pebble to accompany the installation. It includes a foreword by Sir Nicholas Serota and essays by Rowan Williams, Ruth Padel, Graham Howes and Jaya Savige, amongst others.

For any further information or to receive a copy of the brochure, please contact Tom on tasd2@cam.ac.uk.