Pentecostal flames burn through canvas

Laura Gascoigne

Speaking in Tongues
Venice Biennale, Italy

One afternoon in May, in a little church tucked behind St Mark’s in Venice, the Moscow Synodal Choir suddenly burst into song. It had been booked that morning to sing an Orthodox Mass in the crypt of the basilica, but its performance in the deconsecrated church of San Gallo was unscheduled: a spontaneous response to a temporary altarpiece installed in the church for the Venice Biennale. “It was,” says the artist who created it, “a very special moment.” 

In a city with a population of 55,000 and 139 churches, many church buildings are inevitably closed; but every two years the Biennale comes around to breathe new life into them. When Paul Benney was invited to show his installation, Speaking in Tongues, displayed last year at Chichester Cathedral, he was taken around the city by Don Gianmatteo Caputo, a priest and architect at the cultural heritage office, to assess the available venues. He chose San Gallo because of its intimacy and darkness, which he hoped would maximise the illusion of Pentecostal flames burning through the surface of his 12ft-wide canvas.