South Wales pubs and cafes to display Easter paintings of Mark Cazalet

The dramatic Easter paintings of a significant and celebrated contemporary artist are to be displayed in pubs and cafes across the south Wales.

In past years if you wanted to see Mark Cazalet’s West London Stations of the Cross paintings you would have to visit a cathedral.

But for a limited time this month, the artists work depicting the Easter story is to be placed in fifteen pubs and cafes across the Vale of Glamorgan.

Dramatic

The paintings show the trial, condemnation, public walk, beating and execution in
the Easter story, all set in modern London.

The scenes in the paintings include Wormwood Scrubs Prison, Portobello Road Market and the Penguin House of London Zoo.

Mark Cazalet said: “I felt it was essential to enact the drama within a walking radius of my Ladbroke Grove home and this current Welsh pubs and cafés project brings the paintings into the streets of Vale of Glamorgan towns of Penarth, Cowbridge and Llantwit Major.”

Display

The works can be found in four of Cowbridge’s historic pubs, six cafes in the seaside town of Penarth and scattered amongst shops, cafes and pubs in Llantwit Major where the paintings will finally be gathered together on 24 th March for a display through Easter as a complete set.

Shown in graphic detail in the paintings is the compassion of people on the pavements for the condemned man and also the dispassionate cruel violence inflicted in urban scrap land, pedestrian walkways and under motorway flyovers.

The paintings bring vivid, shocking portrayals of the workings of everyday violence in the world today and link it to the passion, degradation and transformation of the Easter story.

The popular Penarth cafe The Busy Teapot has moved their ‘specials board’ and replaced it with a Cazalet painting.

Joint owner Martin Shaw who runs the kitchen at The Busy Teapot said: “It’s a privilege to have this painting. I really like it. People are welcome to come and see it!”

Themes

The project has deliberately taken the paintings out of religious settings to open up
questions about the contemporary relevance of the themes for people today.

At the Ocho Lounge in Penarth’s busy Windsor Road shift manager Cara said: “I’m excited. It’s great to be part of this, and I can’t wait to see everyone who arrives to find the painting.”

The Ocho Lounge painting shows the Entombment of the Easter story set under a railway arch.

In Llantwit Major a stark painting set on a London Underground tube station is hanging in the foyer of the Filco Supermarket.

Pub crawl

In Cowbridge the pubs The Horse & Groom, Bear Hotel and Duke of Wellington are all displaying one of the fifteen paintings, with the Vale of Glamorgan Inn showing the work in which Christ is nailed to a post in a West London scrap yard.

“It’s not exactly your traditional pub crawl,” said project director Richard Parry who has placed the works for two weeks in the town venues, “but the amazing paintings with all their intense detail will certainly prove a talking point in the town’s bars as people move around to discover how Cazalet handles the story for us.

“And if you don’t fancy a pub crawl you’ll find all the hostelry venues in Cowbridge offer soft drinks and teas and coffees too!”

The paintings will remain for discovery in Vale of Glamorgan venues until Friday March 22 and then will be on public display at both St Illtud’s Church and The White Hart pub in Llantwit Major from March 24 to April 1.

Final act

The reason for the dual final venues was explained by Richard Parry who said: “The fourteen traditional Easter story pictures will be presented in the ancient church, the site of which dates back to Celtic times and still today has world class Celtic Crosses on display, but anyone wanting to see the fifteenth Resurrection painting will have to go up the road to the pub. After all, a pub was the setting of the final act in the original story 2000 years ago!”

The artist Mark Cazalet trained at the Chelsea and Falmouth Colleges of Art and undertook international scholarships before producing large-scale glass and painted works which can be found in Worcester, Manchester and Chelmsford Cathedrals.

The West London Stations of The Cross were painted in 1998 and 1999 for a special exhibition in the year 2000 at Bury St Edmunds.

The paintings are owned by John and Elizabeth Gibbs who are very pleased to
loan the works for public display in towns across south Wales.

The project is the idea and initiative of the New Library in Llantwit Major who is working with St Illtud’s Church in Llantwit Major and Holy Cross Church, Cowbridge to encourage people to explore the paintings.

Cowbridge’s Rev Duncan Ballard said: “The events of Easter transformed human history and our idea of religion. These events echo down through the centuries, but we often prefer to keep them at arm’s length. These Mark Cazalet paintings are so important, as they help interpret Easter for us today.”

The paintings can be found in these places:

Penarth:
Sid’s Bar and Restaurant – painting: Veronica
The Busy Teapot – painting: Takes Cross
Ocho Lounge – painting:  Entombed
Cafe 64 – painting:  Falls 2
Windor Restaurant and Tea Rooms – painting:  Women Weep
Foxy’s Deli –  painting:  Crucified

Llantwit Major:
Cafe Velo – painting:  Meets mother
Filco Supermarket – painting:  Falls 3
St Illtud’s Church – painting:  Stripped
Old White Hart – painting:  Emmaus

Cowbridge:  

Bear Hotel  –  painting:  Simon of Cyrene
Duke of Wellington –  painting:  Sentenced
Holy Cross Church  –  painting:  Falls
Horse & Groom  –  painting:  Pieta
Vale of Glamorgan Inn  –  painting:  Nailed

Further information can be found on the project website.