A new artwork has been installed at Coventry Cathedral to replace an etched window that was smashed during a burglary in January 2020.
'Lichtung', the work of artist Anne Petters, will temporarily replace the smashed John Hutton West Screen.
The new artwork is the first of three that temporarily replaces the ‘Angel of the Eternal Gospel’ - one of 66 larger-than-life glass engraved figures depicted in the Screen.
During the break in to the Cathedral last year, the damage left by vandals destroyed one of the angels on Hutton's West Screen.
Lichtung is the first of the Broken Angel series of commissions that is set in the glass ‘West Screen’ by John Hutton.
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Lichtung was installed on 6 November and will remain on display until February 2022 when it will be replaced by the next commission.
Petters has made two related works Lichtung - Break in which a piece of broken window glass from the West Screen, both magnifies and projects onto the now blank window where the Angel of the Eternal Gospel used to be, and Lichtung - White Drift which is located nearby.
The Broken Angel series has been commissioned by Coventry Cathedral, working with advisory curator Michael Tooby, Professor of Art and Design at Bath School of Art & Design, Bath Spa University.
The West Screen’s original engravings were created over a decade by John Hutton, who created an entirely new glass-engraving technique in the process. Commissioned by the Cathedral’s architect Sir Basil Spence, they were set in the 21.5m x 18.85m screen according to a design by Ove Arup.
Marking the work’s importance to Hutton, when he died in 1978 his ashes were buried at the foot of the window, beneath the position of where the ‘Angel of the Eternal Gospel’ stood.
Artist Ann Petters said: “I remember standing in front of the cathedral’s West Screen for the first time in 2016, overwhelmed by Hutton’s unique and dynamic way of cutting into glass.
"Having worked with glass for 15 years at the time my emotional reaction was quite intense, I could firmly hear the sound of grinding into glass and sense the physical effort that would go into an artwork like this.
"The massive West Screen for me is not only overwhelming in its beauty, it also feels dangerous, almost threatening, but fragile at the same time, an attribute which is always inherent in the material glass. It is a huge honour and a great joy to be presenting Lichtung - Break / Lichtung - White Drift in this space."
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Dean of Coventry, Very Rev’d John Witcombe said: “When our original Angel came down, the smashing glass made a devastating sound as it resonated around our Cathedral. Through Broken Angel, starting with this wonderful work by Anne Petters, we seek a creative response to this act of violence and further our 60-year tradition of working with artists as part of our reconciliation work. It’s our own poetic, spiritual Fourth Plinth.
The project has been supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
Coventry Cathedral is free to the public and is open daily from 10am to 4pm from Monday to Saturday, and from 12.30pm to 3pm on Sundays.
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