New Exhibition as a part of “TheoArtistry” Scheme Provokes Conversations about Art, Text, and Theology

By Paige Miller

If you have visited the Upstairs of Innis Gallery at 107 South Street, in St. Andrews, during the past week, you have had the pleasure of viewing the newest art exhibition in town: “Art as Revelation”! According to Dr. Nicole Ruta,a senior researcher at St. Mary's College at the University of St Andrews, and co-curator of the TheoArtistry exhibition, “The aim…was to create a space for artists and postgraduate researchers in theology and other disciplines to collaborate, exploring the relationship between spiritual and religious text and art. TheoArtistry is about a meeting of the ways: between theology and the arts, between theory and practice, and — in the latest TheoArtistry scheme — between text and image.” 

As a part of ‘RESONANCE’ Chaos in Paradise, Judith Burrows, 2021, steel and organic matter, 3 panels, 30 x 125 x 2.5 cm 

She, along with Dr Rebekah Dyer and Anna McNay, co-curated of the current TheoArtistry art exhibition, a multi-discliplinary research collaboration, where visual artists and academic researchers have joined forces to tackle the theme “Revelation”. This art exhibition is part of a larger collaborative effort: the TheoArtistry: Text & Image scheme 2021. For the current art exhibition, new text-inclusive artworks are the result of countless hours of collaboration between researchers and artists. Partner artists include Claire Fontaine, Gordon Cheung, Russell Crotty, Michael Takeo Magruder, Simon Morley, Tom Phillips, Kay Rosen and Mark Titchner. The research team is comprised of Nicole Ruta, Rebekah Dyer, Brendan Wolfe, and Dhanraj Vishwanath, all postgraduate researchers in Theology. Artists and theologians worked together to address themes of ‘SUBVERSIVE, ‘RESONANCE’, ’POTENTIAL’, ‘(DIS)EMBODIED’, ‘KINSHIP’, ‘SH-AL-OM’, ‘LIGHT’, and ‘HIDDENNESS’. For viewers, TheoAristry’s “Art as Revelation” exhibition provokes deeper contemplation about the intersections of art and theology and, more centrally, the role that text plays in communication, when paired with visual-media.  

As a part of “SH-AL-OM”: Alpha and Omega, Taya De La Cruz & Alice Gavin Atashkar, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm 

The exhibition has been housed at the Upstairs @ J&G Innes Gallery for the past week and will now be available for viewing at Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church on Queens Terrace, from 10th to 19th December 2021 (M-F 11:00am to 4:00pm and Sundays during worship services). 

To find out more about the exhibition and stay updated on TheoArtistry, please visit the exhibition’s webpage: https://artasrevelation.org/ and follow TheoArtistry on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  

FB page: TheoArtistry | Facebook page  

Twitter: @theoartistry_ 

Insta: @theoartistry_ 

Many thanks to Dr. Nicole Ruta for her collaboration and comments.