Rowley Gallery Blog
This time last year we’d recently returned from Sicily, and two sultry weeks in Ortigia, where the balcony of our apartment looked out over the sea. We watched through our crystal ball, waiting each day for a breeze, but the sailing boats passed by inverted, the air was still and we were becalmed. Continue reading “One Last Day In Ortigia”
わたしのチイサナココロ [i have a small heart] is a short documentary accompanying one woman’s journey along the Kumano Kodo through the Kii mountains of Japan. This ancient pilgrimage route, one of only two Unesco World Heritage pilgrimage sites in the world, is considered the spiritual heart of Japan.
Megumi, a thirty-something woman living alone in Mie Prefecture, has always felt a calling to walk the major pilgrimages of the world. We travel with her as she walks the Kumano Kodo seeking solace and connection to the generations of pilgrims around the world.
At the culmination of filming, we were granted extraordinary access to observe a rare ceremony with the Buddhist monks & Shinto priests of the region.
The monks had walked through the mountains for days to pray with the priests. Together, they honored the deeper connections to the land and shared history that transcend any particular religion or practice.
Alongside one small local news team, we were the only camera crew allowed access to document this ceremony.
A labor of love, this film began with these questions:
– Across time and all cultures, humans have established and maintained pilgrimages. What is it that draws us to these difficult journeys?
– How can we reconcile feelings of faith and doubt in religion?
– What role can pilgrimage play in our modern lives?
We hope this film can help be part of the search for the deeper connections that unite us across our different cultures, beliefs, and religions.
Bajir Cannon, Maki Itami Cannon, Megumi Ueno
This little painting hung on the wall of our house in Calvi. It looked like the campanile of one of the churches we visited yesterday, perhaps in Calenzana or maybe Montemaggiore.
The Genoese… besides tending their gardens, they built churches, so many over the centuries… that the region was called ‘holy Balagne’; today their bell towers charmingly punctuate the landscape like a series of mild exclamation marks.
Corsica: Dana Facaros & Michael Pauls
But when I took it down I found Église d’Avapessa handwritten on the back. Continue reading “Le Chêne Vert”
For one week in May this was our bedroom window, with its view of the Golfe de Calvi and the mountains beyond, with Monte Grosso 1,938 metres and Monte Padro 2,393 metres, two of the highest in Corsica. Every morning their silhouette was gradually illuminated as the sun rose behind them, projecting fast-moving cloud shadows onto their faces, with every morning a different view. Continue reading “La Balagne”
We were staying at the top of the hill, behind the beach and the hotels, looking east over the bay to the mountains beyond. North of us was the Citadel but it only came into view as we descended the zigzag path back down into town. It seemed like a good place to begin exploring. Continue reading “One Day In Calvi”
The doorway in the rock face opened into a honeycomb of catacombs, hand-carved rock tombs and tunnels, cubicles and niches, an underground depository for the dead. All now dissolved, evacuated, long gone and undead, a dormitory of empty beds, a newfangled airbnb ghost town opportunity. Continue reading “Cava Ispica”
It was midday when we arrived in Ispica, the August sun was high and the streets were hot but the town was closed, the shutters were down and lunch was off the menu. It appeared unwelcoming but the guide book had promised much more – The small town of Ispica was rebuilt on its present site after the earthquake of 1693 destroyed the former town on the valley floor… The chalk eminence on which it stands is pierced with tombs and cave dwellings. These can best be seen in the Parco della Forza at the south end of the Cava d’Ispica… best approached from Ispica along Via Cavagrande. It has lush vegetation, water-cisterns, tombs and churches, all carved out of the rock, and a remarkable tunnel known as the Centoscale (‘Hundred Stairs’), 60m long, formerly used by people carrying water from the river to the town. Continue reading “Ispica & Modica”
Drawing in the Jungle
For years now, each spring, Jelly Green has found refuge in the rainforest. She gradually realised she was developing an allergic reaction to the pesticide-sprayed fields of her native Suffolk, and so she escaped to the tree-clean air of Brazil, Sri Lanka, Borneo and New Zealand. The paintings she made there can be seen at Gallery@Oxo from the 4th to the 7th of April. The exhibition is called Devour. The paintings are delicious. Come and see and devour them with your eyes. Continue reading “Devour”
Last August, on holiday in Sicily, a short walk out of Ortigia through the hot dusty streets of Syracuse brought us to Neapolis, one of the largest archaeological sites in the Mediterranean. The entrance is beside the little Norman church of San Nicolò dei Cordari, which was built over part of an aisled Roman piscina, a reservoir to provide water for the nearby amphitheatre. Continue reading “Neapolis Archaeological Park”
The original city of Noto was 12km further up the valley of the Asinaro River from where present day Noto now stands. It was relocated after the devastating earthquake of 1693. The original site is now an overgrown ruin, reclaimed by nature and slowly sinking back into the earth. There were buildings here from the 17th century and all down the ages back to Greek antiquity, but now they’re mostly just stones in the undergrowth, but for one or two exceptional and magnificent survivors. Continue reading “Noto Antica”