Paintings left outside in live storms hang at the altar of Burham's Grade I medieval church from 23 to 27 September, with a private view on the Thursday.
Paintings that were made outdoors in live storms, and left for the weather to finish, go on show inside a twelfth-century church at Burham next week.
A Quiet Storm is an installation of work by the Kent artist Kim O’Neil. It runs at St Mary’s Church, Old Church Road, Burham, from Wednesday 23 to Sunday 27 September, 10.30am to 4pm each day. There is a private view on the Thursday evening, 24 September, from 6pm to 9pm.
One point of geography first, because the postal address misleads. St Mary’s takes a Rochester postcode, ME1 3XY, but the village of Burham is not in Medway. It sits in Tonbridge and Malling, about four miles south west of Rochester, in the Chatham and Aylesford constituency.
Paintings the weather finished
The method is the story. O’Neil paints outside while a storm is actually happening, then lets it work on what she has done.
She “creates her works outdoors during active storms, beginning with intentional marks before allowing wind, rain, and shifting atmospheres to transform the surface”, the announcement sent to Medway Live says. “Each painting becomes a dialogue between artist and weather; intention, interruption, response.”
One of the works is named in the announcement as “The Storm”, a study in Payne’s grey.
O’Neil has since set out the method in her own words. “My storm paintings are made during stormy weather. I apply paint in certain ways and then allow the rain to move it, before responding with another mark,” she told Medway Live. “It becomes a dialogue between me and nature, nature painting a bit, me painting a bit, and so on. I let the rain wash over me and the painting, the wind sends the paint in different directions, and the essence of the storm pours through me onto the canvas.”
The organisers say the series was made at a particular point in O’Neil’s life, and that this is part of what the surfaces record. It was “developed during O’Neil’s transition into middle age”, the announcement says, and “carries the turbulence and clarity of that life stage, revealing a shift into a more elemental self”.
They also read the paintings as a record of something larger. “As extreme weather intensifies globally, these storm-altered surfaces also register the wider environmental instability shaping our world.”
The works will be placed at the altar. Put there, the organisers say, they “invite reverence for nature itself”, and they call weather “a living force we move within and are continually shaped by”.
O’Neil’s own website describes her as a Kent artist and a “Nature Collaborator”, and her work as built from heavy layers of texture and fluid paint, taking its cues from the sea, rain and twigs. Her studio can be reached at kimoneilstudio@gmail.com or on kimoneil.com, and she posts as @kimoneilstudio on Instagram.
The building it is hanging in
The “medieval architecture” in the billing is not a flourish. St Mary the Virgin is Grade I listed, first listed on 25 August 1959, and Historic England dates the fabric to the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, restored in 1956.
The official list entry records:
- random ragstone rubble walls and plain tiled roofs
- a three-stage fifteenth-century west tower with a crenellated parapet
- twelfth-century windows on the south side of the nave
- a thirteenth-century chancel and a fourteenth-century east window
- the blocked arcades of a demolished north aisle, still visible
- a Norman font with a square bowl and arcade decoration
The church is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, which describes it as a stocky flint-and-ragstone church with a rustic, partly plastered interior and two ancient Norman fonts. It stands on the pilgrims’ route to Canterbury, and the trust says it “was deserted when the village moved to higher ground”. That is why the old church now sits on its own, away from Burham itself.
O’Neil says the age of the building is part of why the work is hanging in it. “St Mary’s is a beautiful, reverent space steeped in history. It’s medieval, so it has weathered many storms, and it provides a brilliant neutral background for the paintings.”
She also ties the shape of one of the works to the room it is going into. “The triptych is made of three wooden panels, echoing the structure of ancient altar paintings, only much larger,” she says. “This connects to the idea that nature is the master of us all, and is something to be worshipped rather than destroyed.”
What it means for you
If you want to go, the practical points are these.
- The run is five days, Wednesday 23 to Sunday 27 September, 10.30am to 4pm.
- The private view is on the Thursday, 6pm to 9pm. The announcement does not say whether it is open to all, so ask first if you are not invited.
- Admission is free. The trust’s own page lists the church as open daily, 10am to 4pm.
- By car, the trust’s directions are to leave the A229 and follow the historic church sign in Burham along Court Road.
- The nearest railway station is Snodland, which the trust puts at 0.7 miles away.
- The church is reached up a grassy slope, and there are two steps down into the building. The organisers confirm that is the access, and put it down to the age of the building.
- There are no toilets on site. There is a pub round the corner.
Questions about the exhibition itself go to the studio at kimoneilstudio@gmail.com, not to the trust.
More things to do nearby are in our guide to things to do in Medway.
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