Whilst increasingly rarefied in practice, the role of art for the modern church continues to be explored, questioned and debated, yet its application is often poles apart; divided between the imposition of an externally referenced monument to a known artist that risks transforming the sacred space into gallery and the overly inward-looking community/ folk art/craft generated through engagement with a small section of the congregation that reflects ideas of the Church as a narrow community facility. Knight’s research through varied modes of practice, partnership and co-creation methodologies explore a sense of place and ownership within a broader understanding of community without losing sight of the core functioning of the building as a site of worship.

By expanding the understanding of a religious life as lived through the public vehicle of the church’s greater architecture, Knight’s works enter an intimate material conversation with the liturgical and ceremonial life of the church.

Through breaking out beyond representational convention, the series taken together enters a wider debate in the US and specifically in New York City about memorial sculptures, about what we might choose to memorialise, where and how, and the place of the Church in that public conversation. This research produced three artefacts all in situ at the Church of Transfiguration and St Mary Church New York. ‘Our Father’ 2014; in celebration of Father Felix Varela, the Cuban-born priest who founded the parish of the Church of Transfiguration in 1827, ‘Gentle Rain of Mercy’, 2016; representing the internal, personal and intimate and ‘Lux Mundi’ 2020; the threshold, the entrance to sanctuary.