Illuminating influence of Christianity

The Crucifix, Last Supper, Stations of the Cross — for centuries, many scenes from Christianity have appeared in artists’ work, often reflecting changing societal views on faith over time. Dunedin Public Art Gallery curators Lucy Hammond and Lauren Gutsell tell Rebecca Fox about their selection of works from the 15th century to 2022 for "Prayers & Declarations". 

Known internationally for his etched glass works, John Hutton is not as well recognised in the region of his birth — Otago.

He is famous for the angels he engraved on the 21.5m-high and 18.85m panes of glass at the west entrance of Coventry Cathedral (1952-62) and his work on the Dunkirk Memorial (1957).

Hutton was born in Clyde in 1906 and went on to study law before changing tack to become an artist in Wellington in the 1930s. He and his wife left New Zealand for England in the mid-1930s where Hutton worked as a muralist before becoming a camouflage artist in World War 2.

In the 1950s, he shifted to glass engraving, developing a practice in large-scale composition, drawing and glass etching.

"He had his whole career really over there, although he does have works in Aotearoa," Dunedin Public Art Gallery (DPAG) curator Lucy Hammond says.

One work was at the Cathedral of St Paul in Wellington and DPAG also has his work in its collection.

The Madonna and Child (1970) etching was bought with funds from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery Society 75 years ago.

The DPAG work was typical of his very contemporary style and was in the mid-century period.

However, it is a "much more contemporary way of rendering the figure than you might expect to see in, for instance, stained glass windows or church architecture", so is especially interesting because it disrupts expectations of how those things might look, Hammond says.

The work will go on display, illuminated, for the first time since the gallery moved to the Octagon in 1995, in its latest exhibition, "Prayers & Declarations, Exploring art and Christian faith".

"At the same time, it reintroduces an artist who had a really significant career internationally, was very innovative in how he went about creating his works, but perhaps has been lesser celebrated widely in our community here."

The Hutton etching sits among works in the exhibition dating from the 15th century to 2022 that cover painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and moving images.

"It takes us on a path through our collection and also the collection of Hocken, looking at the relationship between Christianity and art across time."

DPAG’s collection is strong in historical art with a connection to themes of Christianity but the exhibition also looks forward to how the relationship has evolved across the 20th century through to the present day.

Curator Lauren Gutsell says works from the Renaissance period are often described as promoting Christian values or recording and sharing of the teachings of the church.

"They were works that could sit in devotional public spaces but also in private homes and so there was a way in which those works were supporting devotional practice.

That sort of thinking was also found at the contemporary end of the exhibition.

"Suddenly you've got ways in which artists are drawing on that symbolism and that iconography but often that's being re-contextualised into different conversations and forms that might be harnessing the power of the crucifixion as a symbol, for example, or deploying it within a feminist lens or a political positioning."

Hammond says several works, both historical and contemporary, are being shown for the first time.

"One of those is a very beautiful small pencil drawing by an artist called Gennaro Maldarelli and it's a depiction of St Nicholas and it came into the collection in 2017."

It will sit among a series of drawings and paintings that explore the lives of saints.

"Works like the drawing of St Nicholas give us ways to introduce to people how to read some of the symbolism that they might find in these historic works so what items might be used or might be associated with the lives and the deeds and the works of particular figures within those narratives."

Gutsell says another highly represented subject within Christian art is the Madonna and Child. One of the earlier pieces being shown will be Master of San Miniato’s Madonna and Child with Pomegranate, c.1470, in tempera and gold, an example of Florentine art from the 15th century.

"The scale of the work is such that it would have sat in a domestic environment and been used within everyday devotional practice.

"It's a work that's very much a carrier of faith and religion. Mary, within this work but also many others, is depicted in a very nurturing, maternal way and usually is depicted with the infant Christ."

The crucifixion is another theme which appears across centuries such as The Deposition (2002) by John Reynolds, Colin McCahon’s Crucifixion with Lamp (1947) from the Hocken Collection and artist Jeffrey Harris’ Crucifixion (1997-2007).

"McCahon’s crucifixions were made in a focused period between 1947 and 1952, with Crucifixion with Lamp highlighting McCahon’s interest in iconography, symbolism and the spiritual.

"Whether a lamp or a candle or in the natural environment, the presence of light, as something physical and spiritual, is seen across many of McCahon’s works.

"In contrast, Jeffrey Harris has depicted the cruciform repeatedly in his paintings throughout his career, harnessing the power and theatricality of religious iconography to reflect his own personal struggles and experiences."

Another work the gallery is "thrilled" to put on display is a new work gifted to the gallery in 2022, Mary Beth Edelson’s Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper (1972). It will sit within a group of works in the exhibition that explore or reinterpret Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, a work that has been the source of inspiration to artists across centuries and is one of the most recognisable mural paintings in Christian art history.

The Edelson work is a print of a collage that sits at The Met in the United States, in which Edelson replaces the heads of Jesus and his apostles and creates a border with the faces of 82 women artists.

"That's coming from a very feminist position, of the feminist art movement of the 1970s and the print of that work that sits in our collection. That work was used and deployed as a comment that was opposing the misogyny that existed within the art world."

Hammond says what viewers will be able to see across the exhibition, particularly as the works move into the contemporary era, is how pervasive the iconography and symbols of Christian art history have become in a very mainstream way.

"Such as angels, which in a historic sense have got very clear biblical narratives and roles and functions within Christian art. By the time you get to the 21st century, the form of the angel is more fluid and flexible and appears frequently in a whole range of contexts so you can see that, within the exhibition, the legacies and long-reaching impacts of a particular art history that reappears in unexpected ways in places.

"So it's going to be a very rich and layered exhibition and goes into places you might expect and also places that might be unexpected and surprising to people."

Gutsell says Robin White’s Concrete Angel, Rata, (1973) is one of the works that is doing the unexpected. The work featuring an angel and church was inspired by a trip White took through the North Island recording experiences of people and places as she went but it was painted while living on Otago Peninsula.

"Robin White's changing the relationship between those forms, because how you see them in her work is not how you would experience them in the actual context. So it's a repositioning of those two forms but drawn through and playing with the perspective of the viewer in interior and exterior spaces but born out of her lived experience."

TO SEE:

"Prayers & Declarations: Exploring Art and Christian Faith", Dunedin Public Art Gallery, December 13, 2025-May 17, 2026