Glorifying God through sacred art
Published: 9 October 2011
By: Selina Venier
Camille Masson-Talansier is in Brisbane this week for the opening of "Living the Honest Life"
AN honest and often vulnerable portrayal of life and faith will be artistically presented in the "Living the Honest Life" exhibition opening in St John's Anglican Cathedral, Brisbane, this week.
Its French creator Camille Masson-Talansier will visit Brisbane on October 13 for the launch.
The offering, on display until November 15, has been organised in conjunction with the Cathedral of St Stephen Art Group (COSSAG).
A spokeswoman of COSSAG described the 20 works as "a quest for the sacred in suburban Australia".
Indonesian-born Camille, who lives with her family in Sydney, said she "would never have defined" herself "as a painter of the sacred years ago" however.
"There is a vast difference between vaguely acknowledging that artists are people with a mission and transforming your creative life to express with the eyes of the soul the knowledge, the love and the understanding of God you have awoken to," Camille wrote some years ago.
"I was to be reluctantly shown that through even the most obscure and bitter experiences.
"Great graces and interior joy were slowly to unfold."
One of the "graces" Camille referred to emanates from her husband's "miraculous recovery" after "a massive subarachnoid brain haemorrhage" or brain aneurism.
"Most people don't recover from something so life threatening," she said of this year's incident.
"(And) people who survive it have speech defects, can't walk ...
"Blaise slipped away into a coma and the doctors said more or less that's it ... but he was back to work in five weeks."
Camille said her husband "was surrounded by priests" from their parish and was "well looked after spiritually" - so much so he began questioning why he survived when others suffering similar incidents don't.
That questioning led to a recovery time interwoven with catechesis.
Blaise celebrated Baptism in their parish of Lewisham, in Sydney's inner west, last August.
One of the most personal artworks in "Living the Honest Life" is "Credo IV".
It was created after Camille watched Blaise's recovery.
"Credo IV was of great comfort to me as it followed the steady rhythms of his heart," she said.
Another in the Brisbane exhibition is "CSF of the 7 Souls" - inspired by "the hours of waiting in front of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) readings ... which slowly ebbed from Blaise's brain every time he came back to life".
Camille said the exhibition asks "How does the Word of God penetrate into the life of homo suburbia?"
"I have always thought that the greatest obstacle to the life of the spirit was to live in the ambient horizontality of suburbia," she said.
"The vertical church is tucked away behind the sprawling shopping mall, silent during the week and shunned by anaesthetised consumers.
"... Everyone goes about his business ... (without) a seeming lack of common purpose or ideal - an absolute individuality."
In answering her question Camille said "in the heart of every man there is a tabernacle".
"In life there are the circumvolutions of existence and their paradoxical repercussions," she said.
"In the house there are many shrines.
"In the trains there are prayers ... I live in the western suburbs where praying in trains is not unusual.
"In the Church there are the sacraments.
"I was born in this time and this century because I didn't decide to ... but I'm here and I try to live the honest life in the suburbs."
Camille said "there's a lot to be said for living the honest life".
"The honest life of the suburbs is of course one of routine - routine of family, work and faith enmeshed with the vision of a higher purpose never distant," she said.
The piece "Grace and the Devil's Advocate" depicts "every man's conversation with his two natures" while "The Statistical Joy of Christians" delves deeper.
"(It's) to be read as a liturgical calendar," Camille said of the latter work.
"This graph painting can also be read as a statistical exposition of the joy in Christians' lives.
"There is much white and gold, balanced by the quietness of Lent, the fire red of Pentecost and the hope of Ordinary Time."
"The Uphill Struggle" presents "hard, brittle Australia, naked suburbia and every man's uphill struggle".
"The Descent from the Cross Window" is a depiction "at the foot of the Cross" while "Retablo of the Aeroplane" is a piece Camille made after Mary, our Holy Mother, helped "save" her from "a terrifying flight".
Camille has also created a retablo for our Blessed Mother "in her simplicity and submission to God's purpose" and another in memory of a family member.
There's also depictions of "Grey Lives", "Too Many Houses" and a "A Good Day" where "the birds are melodiously eating the honey from the flowers, the jelly palms are standing hot and still".
In Sydney Camille is the artistic director of the Weave Arts Centre.
It's a not-for-profit organisation formed in 1975 within the inner-city suburbs of Redfern and Waterloo.
They "promote public awareness, understanding and appreciation of outsider art and indigenous art to the wider community, through a program of education, exhibition, collecting and publishing".
The centre works alongside local community art centres, Mental Health Services, the Department of Juvenile Justice, and two hospitals.
Camille had her first solo exhibition in Sydney in 1981.
When she was living and working in France she "was a painter of pretty things ... with an intuitive sense of decoration" who could "create eminently saleable pictures that disturbed no-one".
It was "in the silence" of an Ignatian retreat centre in 2001 she began to create more faith-oriented pieces.
"With a large graphite stick, large sketches of the night in Gethsemane, the Crown of Thorns, the Crucifixion, and Pentecost escaped from my hand in frantic free moments," she said.
"I saw myself timidly following in the footsteps of Alfred Manessier, the Northerner, who after many years as an atheist, turned to the faith after a retreat with the Trappists of La Grande Chartreuse and subsequently gave his life to glorifying God through contemporary sacred art.
"I started feeling the crown of thorns pressing brutally inches deep inside my skull, and the thick homemade nails in Jesus' broken hands and the ignorant, coarse nature of the man who had manufactured them and his rising anguish and very human terror at death."
A collection of those works titled From the Shadows to the Light - "symbolic homage to the events which have so profoundly transformed" her "person" - remains at the Dax Museum in France.
Camille has enjoyed countless other exhibitions in France and Australia and no doubt her art will continue to present life and faith through an "honest lens".
"Living the Honest Life" will be open from 10am to 4.30pm from October 14 to November 15 and admission is free.
For more information contact COSSAG's Margaret Moore on (07) 3870 9427.
