Notting Hill triptych

CHRISTMAS CARDS on the vic­arage mantelpieces here often occasion comment from parish­ioners, not, I suspect, because such greeting cards stay up for the full 40 days of the season until Candlemas (as do the tree and other decora­tions; why throw them all out at Epiphany?), but for their variety.

Amid the inevitable Madonnas and Childs, Kings in various guises, Santas, snow, and icy-cold views of London landmark buildings, this past year’s talking point was a card of a colourful triptych from a London church.

The contemporary artist Mark Cazalet was commissioned by St Clement’s, Notting Dale, to celebrate the annual Notting Hill Carnival for the 50th anniversary of the fateful 1958 race riots that first led to this public march of reconciliation. The resulting work, which Cazalet finished in haste last November in the weeks after his father’s death, is vibrant and exuberant.

In situ, it stands 165 cm high and is 90 cm wide, or 180 cm when opened. It is a significant piece that suggests not only the progress from the 1950s to the present, but also the parish’s involvement in all the preparations and its aftermath. Now that the Carnival itself is under threat from anti-social forces that have made it, on occasion, so violent, the parish is to be congratulated for marking the event with this com­mission, even if I found the referents to God in it elusive.

Cazalet is most at home when painting urban scenes. As his show “Everyday Epiphany” demonstrated at the Beardsmore Gallery last summer, he can imbue unexpected corners with a dynamic that is at once both timeless and yet present: the A40 flyover, for instance, in Into the Dark (2000) or the rich flowing Thames, more T. S. Eliot than John Masefield, in Thames Bank. That exhibition was full of verticals, struts, pillars, tower blocks, fence posts, and gate posts of a forgotten estate (Parham Pillars).

The present work for St Clement’s has an equally powerful upswing throughout the composition. The pregnant girl with her large hoop earring and her boyfriend in his string vest, baseball cap, and trainers are framed by two city trees. Beyond, housing blocks close off the scene. The world of the 1950s with all the recent Commonwealth immigra­tions is kept dark, under the arch of the railway bridge.

The sheer burst of colour is amazing, and Cazalet’s observation and imagination meld into one riotous display that captures the emotions of the life and noise of Notting Hill. Much has changed in the past 50 years, but, as a reminder of one single constant, a badge gleams out of the middle fore­ground. EiiR surmounts the familiar crowned starburst of silver on a policeman’s helmet. Long may she reign over a land so rich in the diversity that the Carnival heralds.

St Clement’s is in Treadgold Street, London W11.