Blog: Good Friday Opening

From Banksy’s Wall and Piece book

Sometimes, images can speak more profoundly than words. I think this work by Banksy is one such image. To me it says more than any strident soundbite does about the commercialisation of religious festivals. In case we think that such concerns are a contemporary phenomenon, we might also see powerful resonances here with the story of Jesus overturning the money-changers’ tables in the Temple in the days before his death. Religion, it seems, has always been big business.

But is there more to this image than the point it is making about commercialisation? It is a deliberately shocking and deliberately offensive work, and as such it is perhaps one of the most appropriate Good Friday images I have ever seen. Jesus’ death upon a cross - a violent, shocking and offensive death - has been too much airbrushed out of the Easter story, not least by the Church itself. We can be eager not to dwell on pain and suffering, and on the offensiveness of a near-naked man dying a humiliating death. Bunnies and eggs are safer and cuter for the squeamish.

Whatever we have tried to turn Easter into, Good Friday remains about Jesus choosing to die the very worst kind of death for everyone - including those who’ll do their shopping today.

Leigh-on-Sea #EasterIcons Outdoor Art Trail for Easter 2017



Our #EasterIcons Art Trail is now live around the streets of Leigh Broadway, Rectory Grove. Elm Road and Leigh Road, Leigh-on-Sea!

There are 14 pieces of Easter Art to find. Get out and about over the Easter holidays until Monday and see if you can find them all.

Don't forget to take selfies with them and share thoughts on the social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram using the hashtag #IconsOnSea or tagging us @IconsonSea

More info and a virtual google map for your smart phone/tablet on the #EasterIcons micro site by visiting, tapping, clicking this web addess www.icons-on-sea.org.uk

The Icons will be on display until midnight Monday 17th April 2017

Blog: Is it an egg or a void?


It was great to see over 1500 people visit our Christmas Icons installation in the Royals in the weeks leading unto Christmas 2016. 

As a small collective we’re committed to find ways of telling the Christian story in ways that make folk think, laugh, question, learn.

Christianity can sometimes be very wordy, although this has not always been the case in its 2000 year history. We believe images and icons are just as important as words.

This is why something to look at and experience is always at the heart of what we try to do as Icons-on-Sea.

Over the last years we’ve used the Christmas and Easter festivals as opportunities to do something creative. 

We want to try and do something more regular and so once a month we will try and put something new on our website with a similar ambition of offering something to look at which might make us all think, laugh, question and learn.

Here’s a window that I think is fantastic. You go and see it if your ever in London as its a window in St. Martin’s in the Fields, next door to Trafalgar Square.

I think it’s fantastic because it is not clear what we are seeing, it is open for interpretation.

We are drawn to the centre which perhaps speaks of life or death: is it an egg or a void? Are the intersecting lines a web or a prison: are they holding the oval shape from falling or is the oval shape trying to break out? The curved lines make a cross shape: is this the space between Good Friday when Jesus died and Easter Sunday when Jesus was resurrected. 

I wonder what you think?

Feel free to write a comment below...


About the writer:

Andy Goodliff
Andy Goodliff is minister at Belle Vue Baptist Church in Southchurch. Interested in making connections between Christian faith and the arts, politics and everyday life.