40 Hours Devotion (Cave Christ) was a solitary performance documented with photograms & frottage. 40 Hours Devotion, or Quarantore, is a Roman Catholic liturgical action in which continuous prayer is made for forty hours before the Blessed Sacrament. The number of hours principally refers to the time that Christ's Body remained in the tomb thus it was originally practiced as part of the Paschal Triduum in the 12th Century. Consequently whilst Christ’s body lay entombed over Easter I moved into the cave under my flat and surrendered to the darkness in hope that the human body remained on earth whilst the spirit reached God.

 

As an angel revealed itself in a sea wall rubbing from the first pilgrimage to the Margate sands with gifted pottery fragment from tutor Rebecca Truscott-Elves in hand, I hoped more divine creatures and energies would appear again. Whilst this method of taking prints from what the walls of the cave would provide involved giving up control and leaving space for God to intervene, the photograms however, had much more of my hand involved. They acted as a safeguard incase the ego demanding an apparition left me blind to true divinity. This combination of printing techniques ensured I would be orchestrating allowance for apparition but with more guaranteed documentation of the experience.

 

On Maundy Thursday, I imitated The Last Supper alone and concluded 40 days of sobriety over Lent. At 3pm on Good Friday, the time Jesus is believed to have died according to the Gospel of Mark, I began the descent into the chalk smugglers cave hidden under a trap door in my kitchen. Over the next 40 hours of Black Saturday I prayed in darkness with an array of crucifixes, papers, and printing and photographic materials in a makeshift underground dark room begging God to appear on paper.

 

Cave Christ has been exhibited at Union Church, Salon, The Margate Gallery, Hold and the old Primark windows. Original 10x8 photograms and Giclée prints available in a range of sizes.