Lamp of Sacrifice

A meeting day in Glasgow talking about a future project possibility. Exciting but tiring. Also met up with the girls and managed to pop into theMuseum of Modern Art where they have installed Nathan Coley's work - the Lamp of Sacrifice, 286 Places of Worship, Edinburgh 2004. He took the list of religious establishments from the yellow pages and made a cardboard model of each of them.

This work consists of a scale model in cardboard of every ‘Place of Worship’ listed in the 2004 edition of the Edinburgh Yellow Pages telephone directory. The models represent buildings in an area including Lothian, Fife and the Borders. The resulting work is a snapshot of Scotland through its places of religious meeting; churches, cathedrals, synagogues, mosques, Salvation Army halls and temples. The buildings are displayed without regard for their real life location or religious connections. The artist was influenced by an essay by the nineteenth-century artist and writer John Ruskin called ‘The Seven Lamps of Architecture’. Ruskin stated that ‘It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration: not the gift but the giving’.

Quite. But absolutely fascinating to walk round and reflect on the place of religion.