蜜芽传媒

A new play opens this week that tells the story of an industrial Welsh town that in 2019 temporarily became the home of a Banksy mural.

On this programme yesterday, its writer and director Paul Jenkins described how locals had a real 鈥渞everence鈥� for the artwork, how it really spoke to them.

For me, the power of street art lies in the aesthetic juxtaposition it presents us with. It鈥檚 the bursts of colour alongside the concrete that get me, the fragments of hope amid the grey, portals into another vibrant world. . I saw this for myself over Easter as my family and I wandered through streets in Ostend in Belgium, following the trail of its famous street art festival, The Crystal Ship.

When Banksy鈥檚 mural mysteriously appeared on a steelworker鈥檚 garage in Port Talbot, it captured the heart of the community; as the town became a destination for culture lovers, the art came to symbolise possibility.

In another town, hundreds of years ago and hundreds of miles away, the possibility of art as a medium for change entered a new era with a 14thcentury local artistic phenomenon that sprang up in Siena, Italy, and made waves around the world.

Highlighted in a new exhibition at the National Gallery, work from artists such as Ducco and Martini introduced new and vivid ways of painting, sometimes with gilded glass, gold, and ivory.

Art has always had the power to present us with possibility, new and alternative realities 鈥� about ourselves, our cultures and societies. Art can shine a light on the things we鈥檇 rather turn our eyes from 鈥� the grotesque, the inequality, the wickedness. We鈥檝e heard that all art is propaganda; but in so far as it can shape our views of the world, it can also show us what is beautiful, and in turn shape us and our world for the better.

For centuries European artists have attempted to depict the grand narratives of the Christian tradition: creation, the birth of Jesus, the Last Supper, the death of Christ and the resurrection.

But the best Christian art, I think, is inspired by the meanings of those iconic moments to tell us new stories about ourselves and God, that mean something today.

Theologians have long spoken of the power of art as prophetic imagination, that is conjuring up possibility in a world that feels bleak and impossible.

A year ago, the late Pope Francis met with artists at the international cultural exhibition the Venice Biennale. He spoke of the power of art to act a type of 鈥渃ity of refuge鈥�.

鈥淚 beg you,鈥� he told them, 鈥渢o imagine cities that do not yet exist on the maps: cities where no human being is considered a stranger.鈥�

In this appeal, I see the power of art to open new doors, whether that鈥檚 in Ostend, or Siena, or Port Talbot.

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