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We offer daily services and a cultural programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate
Mon 13 Oct to Weds 12 Nov
An exhibition of new work by Namibian artist Tuli Mekondjo, part of the Art in the Side Chapel series at St James’s.
Sun 23 Nov 7pm
Join your host, Barbara, for an evening of laughter, games, prizes, and festive fun — all in aid of the Christmas for All campaign at St James’s Church, Piccadilly.
St James’s hosts inclusive services and a cultural programme. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
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A powerful exhibition of new work by Namibian artist Tuli Mekondjo, part of the Art in the Side Chapel series at St James’s, highlights colonialism, spirituality, and Black history.
The UK’s 2025 Black History Month theme is ‘Standing Firm in Power and Pride’. Tuli Mekondjo’s new exhibition in the side chapel at St James’s features archival photographs from a Christian mission station in northern Namibia. Stories of migration, conflict, and religion make connections with our central London parish’s many communities and contexts, among people of all faiths and none. The exhibition opened on 13 October and will be in church until mid-November. You can listen to Tuli talking about her work here: Tuli Mekondjo – ‘OMUUA OKU LI POPEPI: THE LORD IS NEARER: HERRA ON LÄHELLÄ’ – St James’s Church Piccadilly
She is represented by Guns & Rain Gallery in Johannesburg, and Hales Gallery in New York. Hales describes her and her work: ‘Known for her mixed media and embroidered paintings, Mekondjo’s rigorous practice is a pursuit to connect with and honour her Namibian heritage. Her practice in both mixed media and performance, navigates feelings of displacement, having spent her childhood in refugee camps of Angola and Zambia during the Namibian War of Independence. Sensitive explorations of history and ancestry allow Mekondjo to address, question, and heal parts of this past, deftly weaving personal and collective trauma with beauty, nature and optimism. Mekondjo collects historical photographs — sourced from books, public and personal archives, and postcards — which are then used as a starting point for the figures in the works. She reclaims imagery of local Namibians from the colonial and apartheid periods of South West Africa, during both German and South African occupation in the 20th Century. The work becomes an homage to those figures, often women, preserving and honoring their memory. Mekondjo’s work brings to the fore colonial histories and their legacies, considering present echoes of the past. She threads together iconography of the earth and body with a spirituality influenced by Namibian heritage and its rituals.’
In a recent conversation with me, Tuli explained that conversion, colonialism, and injustice are strongly interconnected in her approach to working with images and textiles. A self-trained artist with lived experience as a refugee, she describes her work as ‘trauma labour’. At St James’s, the altar cloth’s lace references traditional textiles in many colonial churches, and it’s stitched together with photographs that tell a story in their juxtapositions of Namibian people in traditional clothing and hairstyles alongside European and Namibian people wearing western-style dresses. The Black Madonna altarpiece continues and emphasises the themes Tuli has embedded in the cloth: the central image expresses the divine motherhood of a young Black woman with a sacred cowrie shell halo, surrounded by photos of local life including a group of children within the embroidered fabric of the Black Madonna’s heart.
Nearby, a ‘congregation’ of sculptures in the niche on the south side of the altar includes a preacher, a Black mother with a white child, and two young Namibian girls in masks and traditional dress worn as part of a coming-of-age ritual which was banned – along with many aspects of local culture and spiritual practices – by European missionaries. Tuli’s work raises deep and profound questions about power, steadfastness, and the abiding promise of true liberation and dignity for all God’s people. It is an invitation to consider the call to work for racial justice and to reflect seriously on the legacies of colonial Christianity. There are strong links with the historical and contemporary histories of St James’s too, as this exhibition is in visual and cultural conversations across time and place with Che Lovelace’s 2023 paintings honouring and celebrating the abolitionist African theologian and author Quobna Ottobah Cugoano. Contemporary artists including Che and Tuli generously offer their work, in paintings, textiles, and sculptures, as opportunities to learn, look, and reflect together in the midst of church life and the many layers of history in and around St James’s.
For more about Tuli Mekondjo’s work, click here: Tuli Mekondjo – Overview | Hales Gallery
To learn more about Che Lovelace’s commission for St James’s, click here: Cugoano – St James’s Church Piccadilly
Che Lovelace’s new paintings are also being exhibited at Corvi-Mora Gallery until 20 December: Corvi-Mora
The Revd Dr Ayla Lepine, Associate Rector
