Ben Jamie – Diana Orving – Carolein Smit – Elena Unger – Kate McDonnell – Anne von Freyburg
Maxim Burnett – Juliette Losq – Claire Curneen – Nick Cave – Jack Evans – Edgar Ward
St Bartholomew the Great Church, London
Curated by Elena Unger and James Freeman
What happens when a space becomes more than a space, when it’s no longer just a backdrop but a collaborator, a participant in a conversation? Saint Bartholomew the Great—a medieval church nestled in the heart of London—has been just that for 901 years. It exists not as an architectural artefact but as a living entity and church community, one that seems to float on the edge of time and place, forever caught between the city and something beyond it.
Visitors to Saint Bartholomew’s often speak of discovering the church in a moment of sudden realisation. Perhaps they have walked past it dozens, even hundreds of times, and then, one day, they step inside and encounter a space that resists classification, that transcends the usual markers of time and geography, even standing apart from other similar churches. What is it about certain spaces that evoke this sense of the transcendent, this feeling of contact with something ineffable? It raises questions about our own relationship to the built environment, to the spaces we pass by and those we pass through, often without a second thought.
Saint Bartholomew’s is a church of fragments—a patchwork of architectural styles, stones weathered by time, and relics that carry their own histories. But these fragments coalesce into something larger than the sum of their parts, something monolithic yet alive, as if the building itself breathes and listens. And in its emptiness, it doesn’t feel empty at all. Rather, it becomes a container for memory, for resonance, a conduit that invites the past into the present, creating an awareness that is both human and somehow beyond.
The works in this exhibition are chosen not just as objects, but as presences that bring their own sense of life into the space. Each piece plays with the idea of the “living stone,” of materials that watch and respond, creating new dialogues within the framework of this ancient building. Some works make use of relics and discarded fragments, reconfiguring them in ways that emphasize continuity, transformation, and communion across time. Others create immersive encounters—architectures of sound, image, and material that, like Saint Bartholomew’s itself, have the capacity to transport.
In bringing together these works, we return to a fascination with the Gothic, to a longing for spaces where the known meets the unknown and where art, architecture, and viewer are all complicit in creating an encounter with the transcendent. Why do we seek out this space, this collision between the animate and the inanimate? Why do we feel drawn to places that hold the weight of centuries, that seem to transcend their own materiality? Perhaps it’s because these spaces and these artworks remind us of something crucial: that art, architecture, and space are never static. They are alive with possibility, existing in a state of perpetual becoming, constantly forming new relationships with the people who pass through them. And in that encounter—between viewer and space, art and architecture, past and present—we, too, become something different. In this sense, Saint Bartholomew’s and the works within it are both haunted and haunting, slipping the veil of time to offer us a momentary glimpse of the timeless. They are, simply put, places where the ordinary fades, and we are left with the sublime, the uncanny, the living.
