Art and Memory: New perspectives on memorial art
West Dean, Nr Chichester, until 1 November
There are those who haunt ancient churchyards in search of elegant epigraphs or curious carvings on lichened gravestones, but many focus only on what makes a good memorial when forced to do so by bereavement, and the desire to commemorate justly someone we loved. A few years ago we might have been forgiven for thinking that the fine art of letter-cutting was moribund, polished off by the dead hand of Church officialdom with its rules and regulations and its mania for neat, ‘easy to maintain’ burial plots, devoid of all interest and idiosyncracy. Then along came Memorials by Artists under the evangelical aegis of Harriet Frazer, and if anyone is still under the illusion that the making of memorials is a dying art they only have to visit the Art and Memory exhibition at West Dean, in the lee of the Sussex Downs, to see how green it flourishes.
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