NELL SULLY

Heathen Idyll

Below the surface of Euston Road, St Pancras Church conceals a crypt. Historically the Crypt was an elite burial ground. This piece was part of our MFA interim show and was a site responsive challenge.

I chose an alcove where, above the first stone laid, was a Greek inscription which translated to:

MAY THE LIGHT OF THE BLESSED GOSPEL FOREVER ILLUMINATE THE DARK TEMPLES OF THE HEATHEN

Heathen meaning ‘man of the heather’… wild and ungodly.

It’s poignant how some Religions have categorically distanced themselves from origin stories, pagan myth and natural symbolism and deliberately thwarted the understanding of our true nature. Therefore of the earth and life itself.

I felt I needed to create a Heathen Golden offering- a wild natural Idyll and place it, as if floating, in the space to appease, to bring truth in, to make apparent perhaps the ridiculousness of paying for a space in a dark, dank, mouldy crypt for perpetuity and class rather than becoming one with nature.