IMAGINE A church which welcomed all believers in God, regardless of their specific creed, and imagine it welcomed all couples, regardless of their sexual orientation, and provided a space for them to marry.
Such a church may be a long time off in reality, but a new exhibition at the Galway Arts Centre will contain a structure inspired by this idea.
Sociodesic: A Space for the Three Great Loves by the New York based Irish artist George Bolster opens at the centre today.
‘Space of The Three Great Loves’, one of the two new installations made for Galway Arts Centre, is in the form of a Geodesic dome that dominates the architecture in which it is housed.
A modular chapel for the marriage of heterosexual and homosexual couples, it is based on the teachings of The Church of Spiritual Equality. Begun in California in the 1960s by Groeg E Bretslo, this was a cult with a human rights bent.
Bretslo’s obsession with the architecture by Buckminster Fuller and plans to build a never realised dome-like church is speculatively realised here. The space is beautifully covered in printed images harking back to 1960s like visions of a utopian future.
Bolster explores themes such as pop music, street culture, and Christianity in his work. He creates works inspired by Biblical characters and narratives and fuses them together with contemporary cultural references.
The exhibition runs until May 29. Admission is free.
