Religion & Contemporary Art

These essays explore the relationship between art and religion. The first part, 2001-2002, is essays about “The Ism”, where 1994-9 Padgett united religious and spiritual perspectives by uniting the art-forms appropriate to them. The second part is essays from 2002-2005, when Padgett studied at Wimbledon School of Art, London, for an MA in Theory of Contemporary Art and Performance. Padgett looks at artists (Damien Hirst, Thomas Hirschhorn, Anton Artaud, Jake and Dinos Chapman Brothers, Guillermo Gomez-Pena etc) and develops the idea of “Postmodern Religious Art”. His program of uniting the art-forms is progressed by uniting the specific material forms of religions in semi-irony with the profane – whilst keeping the sacred as of highest importance. The final part is the questionnaire that Padgett submitted to the Employment Tribunals, giving the main arguments behind his claim that the Tate Galleries were exercising religious discrimination in the way they selected artworks.