Jake Lever: Soul Boats.

Turner, Claire

Jake Lever: Soul Boats

Birmingham Cathedral

29 November 2015-March 2016

In her discussion of space and pedagogy, Elizabeth Ellsworth comments that 'Art bends under its chosen burden of trying to make shareable a knowing that cannot be explained.' (1) Reflecting on the experience of standing in the middle of Birmingham Cathedral, Ellsworth's words come to mind. Looking up at a shimmering flotilla of small, golden boats suspended high above the nave, at once cradling the air above and resting on that below, the viewer can't help but wonder about such 'knowing'. Each boat contains a concealed cargo the memories, prayers, thoughts or reflections of around 2000 participants, of many faiths and none, who were asked to record something of their journey through life on the inside of a carefully designed, boat-shaped template. Writing about his project, artist Jake Lever says,

   The depth of engagement by participants
   of all ages in making their boats
   was incredible. Some, for example made
   boats in memory of loved ones who've
   died, some ranted about their difficulty
   in finding work and others celebrated
   the high points of long lives lived well.
   These moving reflections are on the
   inside of the boats, as private prayers,
   hidden from public view.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

But the 'knowledge' alluded to here is not just the unseen prayers of those who participated in the project, some during workshops and drop-in sessions facilitated by the artist, some during services, lessons or events led by others, some during the Cathedral's 'Something Good' outdoor arts festival. Rather, the installation offers a sense of the other, the transcendent; without attempting to describe or illustrate it appears to bend, both physically and metaphorically, inviting the audience to share something that is always just out of reach.

From below, small details of this expansive work start to suggest further connections. The overall shape of this fleet is that of a hull of a large boat--I want to say arc but such a simplistic analogy doesn't seem to do the work justice. However, the edges of this vessel are irregular. There are gaps, spaces--some of the Soul Boats are bleeding out of the formation--the edges are fuzzy. The boats themselves are irregular too but there is something about the way in which Lever has moulded this installation that elevates an ordinary, sometimes quickly made cardboard boat into something extraordinary. Like faith itself, the work cannot be held in position nor its constituent parts corralled into a neat formation. That said, the flotilla engenders a sense of direction pointing as it does, forwards towards the sanctuary. Here the prayers of the people are directed to somewhere else or to someone other. They are at once fragile and proud, vulnerable and certain, much like the people who will pass through the Cathedral's doors over the coming weeks and months. My experience both as a visitor and as a participant in the project leads me to believe that they will want to pause like I did, and look up. Perhaps they will stand, slightly disoriented from the sensation of craning upwards; perhaps they will sit, looking along the prow of the ship formed by these floating souls; perhaps they will choose to lie down and 'float' but however they choose to experience this installation, I believe they will be moved by it.

In summary, Soul Boats by Jake Lever, funded by the Westhill Endowment and commissioned by Birmingham Cathedral to celebrate its tercentenary, celebrates the somewhat transitional nature of sacred space by inviting, both in the process of its conception and in its final aesthetic, ongoing reflection on what it is to journey with a sense of that which cannot be explained. It is not surprising that Lever finds inspiration in the work of poet Clarissa Pinkola Estes who writes,

   The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They
   are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that
   spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship
   is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But
   that is not what great ships are built for. (2)

Claire Turner is Vicar of St Chad's Rubery, Birmingham

(1.) Elizabeth Ellsworth, Places of Learning: Media, Architecture, Pedagogy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005) p. 157

(2.) Clarissa Pinkola Estes, available from http://www.huna.org/html/cpestes.html