Es Devlin to unveil landmark installation on the Strand in London in support of UNHCR 

Congregation is curated by Ekow Eshun and has been developed in collaboration with King’s College London in partnership with The Courtauld.

The work will be free and open to the public daily from 11am till 9pm with free public choral performances within the surrounding pedestrianised area of the Strand outside The Courtauld at 7pm each evening from Friday 4th October until Wednesday 9th October, to coincide with Frieze London.

An illustration of Congregation by Es Devlin. Photo: Daniel Devlin

Over the past four months, Es Devlin has been making large scale chalk and charcoal portraits of 50 Londoners who have experienced forced displacement from their homelands. The drawings will be presented as a monumental projection-mapped tiered structure within the eighteenth-century church of St Mary le Strand adjacent to The Courtauld and Somerset House. The sculptural collective portrait will be accompanied by choral music performed outside the church at dusk each evening.

Each portrait sitter is a co-author of the work. Each is depicted holding a box containing a projected animated sequence which they have envisaged. The co-authors constitute a vibrant London congregation whose roots extend across the globe to Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Somalia, Tanzania, Chile, Venezuela, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo and Germany. All 50 voices are included in an accompanying sound sequence composed by Polyphonia. The projected film sequence has been created in close collaboration with film maker Ruth Hogben and choreographer Botis Seva.

In parallel to the installation, the Sanctuary Programme and The Policy Institute at King’s will be holding public events and policy development discussions with leading researchers on asylum and migration policy. These will be presented as part of a wider season, Lost & Found: Stories of sanctuary and belonging, developed and curated by King’s Culture.

The work is being made in response to the history of St Mary le Strand, the first of 12 churches to be completed according to Queen Anne’s commission of 50 new churches to replace those lost in the Great Fire of London. St Mary’s Scottish Catholic architect James Gibbs practiced in secret at a time of severe persecution, weaving emblems of the exiled Catholic James of Scotland within the architecture of the building. The church is also replete with Masonic symbols and was the site of masonic gatherings whose secret congregation included both Catholic and Jewish members, in spite of public prohibition.

Devlin and curator Ekow Eshun are responding also to their research into the Courtauld’s origins, established by a Huguenot refugee, and the origins of King’s College London as a university with a long history of developing sector-leading initiatives that support forcibly displaced staff and student, as well as the Strand’s history more broadly as an ancient processional route from east to west, a foundational migratory artery of the city since AD93.

Devlin’s approach to making the portraits is rooted in a visit to Lucian Freud’s sketchbooks in the archive of the National Portrait Gallery, and in her research within The Courtauld’s collection of 500 years of portraiture from Albrecht Dürer to Frank Auerbach.

She carries out the first 45 minutes of the drawing session without any knowledge of her sitter/co-author. After 45 minutes the drawing is paused while the co-author tells Devlin their story, then the drawing resumes.

​——————–

Watch this space to learn more about Congregation.

You can also sign up to receive the latest information on refugee news, issues, updates on our campaigns and how you can support our work.