THIS exhibition demonstrates the value of welcoming and supporting artists within congregations. The artist and curator Elena Unger has been confirmed at St Bartholomew the Great, is a member of the PCC, and, when she requested permission to paint regularly in the building, was afforded that opportunity. As a result of that decision, she has become artist-in-residence and the curator of two exhibitions there, of which the current one is in collaboration with the artist Heidi Pearce.

Unger’s deep knowledge and understanding of the building and the ministry that is facilitated in and through it is combined here with Pearce’s commitment to encounters with the uncanny as a positive experience within spaces and shows. The result is an exhibition perfectly attuned to the space — not simply in terms of its materiality, but also its purpose — whether the works shown harmonise with the space or pose questions of it.

Eleven Twenty Three sets work by more than 20 emerging or established contemporary artists in the context of this ancient church in celebration of its 900th anniversary (Feature, 20 January; Books, 21 April). The exhibition is part of a programme of anniversary events at St Bartholomew’s. It is hoped that the exhibition will add to the greater awareness of its historical and spiritual riches which has developed in recent years, and add an additional sliver to the layers of prayer laid down, in differing forms, through those nine centuries.

The show explores and reveals the unique configuration of space, sound, and liturgy in the church as the curators have chosen artworks that “participate” in the temporality and spatiality of the space itself. Unger’s installation The Veil of Incense evokes the experience of Great St Bart’s during the mass, when filled with incense. Mary Pedicini’s Everything Sacred creates a trail around the church and exhibition by means of blue metallic thread that has been playfully woven in and out of the grating that circles the church. This thread leads to a large mirror, which enables us, as we are grounded by looking at the floor, to glimpse, also, the heights of this amazing building and the pillars that support the roof and draw our eye upwards towards the heavens.

Carolein Smit’s Relic Foot returns a foot to the tomb of the founder. In the Victorian era, relic-hunters stole the sandal and foot of Rahere, the court jester-turned-monk who founded the church in 1123. Since then, reports have been received of his apparition wandering the church in search of his missing foot. Relic Foot is an offering to him that, through its gliding, jewels, and stigmata wound reflect his unique story of jest and piety.

Others of the works enter into dialogue with the building, its spaces and functions. Juilette Mahieux Bartoli’s Extrasolar descends from the ceiling in the north aisle adjacent to the tabernacle. A series of cyanotypes on silk derived from the plans of spacecraft formed through impressions left on the silk by solar rays, our experience of them is also affected by the sun as it funnels through the high windows, and by the tabernacle light, lit according to liturgical schedule. Extrasolar illuminates our desire to know the universe and what lies beyond it.

Unger’s own paintings work in a similar fashion, albeit tapping the theology that is shared in this place, by focusing on the apocalypse and ideas of resurrection. By doing so, they take us beyond the building, up into the skies and to the very end of time.

Pearce’s work, in contrast, is more grounded. Her Little Moguls are small, soft sculpture dogs found on the pipes and ledges, floors and walls, of the building. Like the mice, who inhabit the cracks and crevices of this sacred space, these soft sculptures highlight overlooked alternative and yet co-existing energies in the space.

With Structural Integrity: Re-imagined, K. V. Duong combines images of tower blocks with broken off stone debris from St Bart’s to bring the world outside this building inside and create comparisons and contrasts across the ages in terms of approaches to and understandings of buildings and their uses.

Although only scratching the surface of the range and diversity of the fascinating pieces that have been sensitively set within the walls of this magnificent and evocative church, these brief descriptions will need to serve as teasers to entice a visit before this exhibition closes. St Bart’s also has, as temporary loans or permanent commissions, interesting works by Sophie Arkette, Christopher Green, Richard Harrison, Damien Hirst, Alfredo Roldán and Josefina de Vasconcellos. The church is also part of the City of London’s self-guided walk “The Art of Faith”, which enables visitors to see artworks by the likes of Thetis Blacker, Jacob Epstein, Patrick Heron, Henry Moore, and Bill Viola, in churches near by.

“Eleven Twenty Three” runs until 3 May in St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, London EC1.

“The Art of Faith”: www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/assets/Things-to-do/art-of-faith-walk.pdf