The artworks, titled Lent to Easter: Walking Country, Awakening Justice, are the work of Wiradjuri artist and Anglican priest Rev Canon Glenn Loughrey. Loughrey, who recently won Western Australia’s Mandorla Art Award for works “in conversation with a Biblical text”, was commissioned by the church to create the pieces which were unveiled at the first new synod of new Archbishop of Melbourne, Ric Thorpe.
Archbishop Thorpe says: “I had the privilege of unveiling five new paintings by Glenn Loughrey at St Paul’s Cathedral. They invite us to spend time with a story we know well – the journey from Lent to Easter – and to consider it alongside the story of Country, colonisation and the continuing work of justice.
“Glenn is a Wiradjuri artist and Anglican priest, and a Canon and Artist in Residence at the Cathedral. His series, Lent to Easter: Walking Country, Awakening Justice, was commissioned by the dioceses of Melbourne and Bendigo and unveiled on Friday 9 October.
“There is much to notice in these paintings. Each has a midnight blue-black background, representing the universe in which we are suspended. A framework carries the colours of Country, while white represents the ancestors, or the “cloud of witnesses”. Across the five works, Glenn explores how truth-telling and the repair of broken relationships belong within the journey towards justice.
“I hope these paintings will help us give time and attention to what we still need to hear and understand. As we follow the familiar movement through Lent and Easter, Glenn invites us to listen to the experiences of First Nations peoples and reflect on what reconciliation asks of us”, he said.