I had the chance recently to visit Damian Hirst's exhibition New Religion recently. It's being shown in the church of All Hallows on the Wall, which is now being used as an exhibition venue, wallspace, as well as a place of worship.
The exhibition brings medical imagery to bear on Christian themes. Hirst's Stations of the Cross are a series of screen prints of pills and medicines, as are a similar series depicting the apostles. On an altar is a silver cast of a heart, pierced with barbed wire, razor blades and hypodermic syringes. A cedar cross is encrusted not with gemstones but with pills. Next to it is a familiar memento mori, a skull, but Hirst's interpretation is the silver cast of a child's skull, with adult teeth poised to push out the milk teeth in the lower jaw. A set of beautiful, provocative objects.
For all the religious imagery, this exhibition didn't seem to be much about Christianity. I heard several people wandering around saying that Hirst must have some kind of faith, but that is to miss the point of the show. It uses the language of religion to say that it is the modern cult of medicine in which we place our trust, derive our hope, and make our meaning. I don't think the show says very much about Christianity at all, except, indirectly, that it is the 'Old Religion', superceded by the New.
'New Religion' has been previously been shown in a 'white cube' style of gallery, but a church setting heightens the tension between new and old. Hirst's objects, parodying church furnishings, demand to be taken more seriously when placed in church. I suspect that Hirst was tickled by the invitation to mount his show in a place of worship. Some might view this as a 'home goal' by the Church; he's subverted our symbols, and we've legitimated what he's doing. But I'm heartened that the Christian tradition is resilient enough to be hospitable towards Hirst's New Religion, not threatened by it. A sign, in effect, that we are not ready to be written off as Old Religion just yet.
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