A LAST SUPPER: DRAWING AN ALTARPIECE
Sheffield Cathedral
Church St
Sheffield
S1 1HA
To coincide with GAZE, Wadsworth’s homecoming retrospective exhibition spanning her 25 year career, the 12ft charcoal preparatory drawing created for her A Last Supper has been installed in Sheffield Cathedral’s Chapel of The Holy Spirit.
A Last Supper: Drawing an Altarpiece will be in the Cathedral from Nov 2019 for one year.
Portraits and religious themes
Her Graves Gallery show GAZE included a dazzling array of portraits, with celebrated sitters including actors David Tennant and Derek Jacobi, filmmaker Richard Curtis, author Neil Gaiman, politicians David Blunkett and Tony Blair and the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
Religious themed work featured heavily among the famous faces, with modern interpretations of St. Francis of Assisi, The Virgin Mary and a sad and beautiful Angel with strap on wings. The exhibition culminated in her critically acclaimed 12-foot-long oil on aluminium reworking of Leonardo’s Last Supper (St George’s Church, Nailsworth) from 2009, which was painted entirely from life with Jesus represented by black fashion model Tafari Hinds.
At the same time as the exhibition opened, Sheffield Cathedral became the host of Wadsworth's charcoal cartoon for the monumental work, offering an insight into the creation of the finished painting and a beautiful tonal counterpoint. A Last Supper: Drawing an Altarpiece will be in situ for one year.
“I wanted to let you know how deeply I admire what you’ve achieved –tremendous vitality, but also a really powerful tension between the agitation of some figures and the profound stillness and presence of others. All the faces repay long looking. I love the finished piece. It moves and pulsates, in colour and texture, and is a wholly remarkable work, I believe.”
