Chris Gollon’s Fourteen Stations of The Cross constitute a unique, site-specific, installation in the simple white interior of the Sir John Soane-designed church.

Commissioned by the Church in 2000, the series was permanently installed at St John’s in 2009 in a service of consecration blessed by Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, and was immediately received with public and critical acclaim. There is no stained glass in the interior of the church, so Gollon’s paintings inject vibrant colour throughout.

The humanity of Gollon’s figures is derived in part by their evident authenticity. All the main characters were modelled by Gollon’s immediate family and friends, including his son as Jesus and his daughter as Mary. These aren’t idealised figures, they feel like living people emersed in an experience of almost unbearable tragedy and as such, they bring the story of the Stations of The Cross to vivid life for a contemporary audience.

Jackie Wullschläger, Chief Visual Art Critic, Financial Times, commented, "Like Spencer, Gollon dramatises the everyday in contemporary images and, depicting our clumsy, ridiculous ordinariness, brings alive for a modern, cynical audience the ghastly dissonance of this story of good and evil, sacrifice and humanity, answering on its own terms a 21st-century culture that regards the heroic as absurd.”

Full-colour fine art catalogues reproducing all 14 paintings, are available for purchase from the church, with texts by novelist Sara Maitland, art historians and writers Laura Gascoigne, Nicholas Usherwood, Tamsin Pickeral, and Jonathan Koestlé-Cate. 

To view the paintings, take a look after Parish Mass on Sundays, visit during Open Church; or visit on the second Saturday of every month when the church is open to visitors 11am - 2pm. Or, get in touch to book a visit.