Worship – Encounter, Respond, Proclaim

Well, last weekend, I went to Southampton City Art Gallery.

Uh, can I have a raise of hands, who's been to Southampton City Art Gallery before? Oh, not that many people.

Okay, that's surprise-- a bit different to this morning.

Most people are, "Yeah, of course I've been there." Um, if you haven't been there yet, go.

It's amazing.

You've got a bit of Monet.

You've got, um, a painting of Southampton by Lowry.

Uh, there's some really cool art, um, so do go and check it out.

And the, the way they've done it is you kind of have some main pieces in the big foyer bit, and then you can go through different rooms and kind of go through different styles and genres through history.

Um, and you get to the end, and you're kind of five hundred years in the past in the Renaissance era and, um, you can kind of see some art that you'd be expecting.

So there's a, a bearded man with a skull.

Um, there's, uh, a man riding a horse who looks like a knight.

Uh, there's a very sad-looking nun.

Um, but then you get to this guy.

Here's-- here he is.

Uh, how weird is that? Um, this is by, I think it's pronounced Giuseppe.

Someone can correct me later if that's wrong.

Um, and it was painted in fifteen sixty-two, and it's very, very strange.

And now I was kind of expecting to see some weird stuff.

I'd just been through a whole corridor of surrealist art, and I'd seen some kind of melting clocks and some floating houses and some wacky, wacky stuff.

So I wasn't too shocked when I got to this guy.

I thought that was weird, but I was, I was all right about it.

Um, imagine being, uh, living five hundred years ago and seeing this guy for the first time.

You'd have been like, "What? What is wrong with this artist? Is he losing it? Is it a man? Is it fruit? What is going on?" Uh, here's a few more examples just for fun.

Uh, this one is made of fish.