In 1973, Arthur Boyd painted Figure in a cave with a smoking book – a naked white man and a muzzled dog watching the haze rise from the page and dissipate into the air. The same year, Patrick White won the Nobel Prize for literature on the strength of novels preoccupied with the possibilities of belief, yet unsatisfied with Christian theology. It was a year of grappling with the unsettled beliefs of settler Australians, of grasping after the sacred.
This talk explores what painters and writers have made of the bible, from the maturation of Australian art and literature in White and Boyd’s generation through to Helen Garner, Christos Tsoilkas and painter Adam Lee. What have they had to say about the bible and its role in their creative processes? What does their work suggest about western crises of faith and the horizons of belief in contemporary Australia?
Saturday 8 April at 7:30 pm. All welcome! Let us know you are going on the Facebook Event.
About the speaker: Dr Meredith Lake is an historian of Christianity in Australian society and culture. She has a PhD from Sydney University, where she has also lectured in Australian history. Her publications include a major study of faith-based social welfare Faith in Action: HammondCare (UNSW Press, 2013), a student guide to The Bible Down Under (Bible Society, 2016), and several academic articles including a prize-winning contribution to the Journal of Religious History. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Anglican Deaconess Ministries, completing a book about the bible’s reception and influence in Australia – from convicts to artists to indigenous activists – to be published in late 2017. She tweets at @meredithlake1
About PEACE: PEACEtalks is a monthly event hosted by Paddington Anglican Church aimed at serving the community by promoting and cultivating deep conversations about life, the world and everything. ‘PEACE’ stands for ‘political, ethical, artistic & cultural engagement’. As such, our events seek to take all of these areas of our shared humanity seriously in a world where such things are often marginalized. We also seek to demonstrate the ways in which spiritual and theological reflection enable us to look at all of these important areas afresh.