Imaging the Bible in Wales

The extent to which Welsh life and culture has been inextricably bound with the Bible is evident in the vast array of visual expressions of biblical themes found throughout across Wales. The ‘Imaging the Bible in Wales’ project, focussed on the period from 1825 to 1975, analysed the social, political and theological questions raised by Welsh biblical visual culture to recognise its contribution to the intellectual, artistic and cultural heritage of Wales.

The project was funded by the AHRC from 2005–8 and was led by biblical scholar Martin O’Kane from the Theology and Religious Studies Department at the University of Wales, Lampeter (now part of the University of Wales Trinity St David). It was run in collaboration with the Centre as well as the National Library of Wales and the National Museum in Cardiff.

Over 250 locations around Wales were visited during the life of the project, and artworks in all media were photographed and catalogued on an online database. Much of this material was located in places of worship or in reserve collections of museums across Wales and most of these artworks had never been published before. A DVD-ROM was produced exploring cross-cutting themes such as the Bible and the Welsh landscape, domestic piety, and art in religious communities, using interviews with artists and experts from different disciplines. This was published in 2010 with an printed volume, Biblical Art from Wales, edited by Martin O’Kane and John Morgan-Guy.

The project also co-curated an exhibition of work with John Harvey at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University, in 2008, incorporating painting, drawing and prints from the university collection and new work in a wide range of media by contemporary artists responding to the biblical narrative.

The online database has continued to grow with the addition of hundreds of new artworks recorded by Martin Crampin, mostly from places of worship, partly as a result of ongoing work on stained glass in Wales by Martin Crampin. It now includes nearly 9,000 images and lists nearly 4,000 items. It is increasingly a repository of images and information from places of worship that have closed since the project began in 2005.