40 Days, 40 Artists
St Michael’s Church, Discoed, Powys

Over the past few years, the remote Welsh border church of St Michael’s, Discoed, has become an unlikely place of Lenten pilgrimage. Since the Herefordshire artist Charles MacCarthy had the idea in 2012 of mounting a group show of contemporary Stations of the Cross in this tiny former shepherds’ church, its Lenten exhibitions have been a fixture on the local calendar.

This year’s exhibition, “40 Days, 40 Artists” (until 18 April), is the most ambitious yet. Forty artists from across the country have been invited to respond to 10 themes from Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, with four artists allotted to each theme and each one set a text on which to meditate. In a further twist, the artists have been asked to take inspiration from an Old Master work of their choice. The catalogue opens with a quote from W.H. Auden: “About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters.”