THE BUNKER

A WING & A PRAYER

A Wing and a Prayer was an exhibition of over 140 works from the Bunker Artspace collection that originated from a question – how do we dare to hope when so much is stacked against us?

The result was a collection of answers from artists across generations, disciplines, traditions, geographies and perspectives. It was an exploration of spirituality in connection to our lived experience – prayer and ritual, the cosmic and the human, the sacred in the mundane, the natural and supernatural. The works on view were imbued with ideas of reverence, faith, hope, survival and ultimately transcendence.

“On a wing and a prayer” is a phrase that was first used to refer to the daring (and almost impossible) landing of a plane – the safe return of the passengers relying solely on a wing and a prayer. Its usage implies that we are under-resourced, underprepared, and our chances of success will require copious amounts of determination and a healthy dose of delusion. In mining the Bunker collection for clues to where we might find hope and how we might conjure a radically different future, we found a multiplicity of signs and signals to point the way and foster courage.

There were symbols from many faiths and spiritual practices, as well as works that engaged with the elements and the natural world as raw material and source of inspiration. There were works that acted as medicine and those that encouraged transformation, there were works that spoke to sacred geometry and those that spoke to chaos and the cosmos.

Somewhat by accident, the exhibition unwound and uncoiled itself like a serpent passing from the root through the heart and ultimately to the crown.

The ‘baptism room’ and ‘medicine room’ were satellites within this larger constellation that ultimately centered itself on an inner sanctum and altar space that allowed us both to see ourselves and to dissolve within the reflection of our own light.

Artists might be considered conjurers, seers, channels to the divine. Acts of creation are acts of faith. We might go so far as to say that the making of an art object is a form of prayer. And prayer is defined as communication with the sacred, the holy, the unseen, the transcendent. In their very act of making, the artistic process becomes ritual – the prayer in this case beyond supplication, is also a portal.

And so, the very process of putting together this exhibition answered our question – how do we dare to hope? Art might be the very thing that moves us into a space of hope, belief and faith – to remind us not of our separation but our interconnectedness, our inter-being, of our power to transcend our limitations, imagine and envision what has yet been unseen, towards an equitable future that we exuberantly want to inhabit...