ARTWORK UNVEILED ON NEW CHURCH

A new piece of public artwork has been unveiled at a Glasgow Church.

One of the walls at St Rollox Church in Sighthill has been adorned with 77 crosses fashioned out of concrete.

Entitled “Assembly”, the piece is comprised of 33 different styles of Christian cross – one representing each year of Jesus’s life before he was crucified.

It was created by prizewinning sculptor Michael Visocchi, who won the £45,000 commission after being selected by a jury chaired by Rev Jane Howitt, the congregation’s minister.

The 44-year-old visual artist said it took him two years to make the crosses which belong to a variety of Christian traditions such as Coptic, Byzantium, Catholicism and Presbyterianism.

He added that the piece includes the St Andrew’s Cross, the Iona Cross, the Manx cross from the Isle of Man and the Hasta Cross, which is two and a half metres long.

Mr Visocchi said: “The work is called ‘Assembly’ and the idea is each cross represents the diversity of people who attend St Rollox Church.

“It’s a metaphor for what goes on behind the walls, and the work’s title references the General Assembly of ministers and elders of the Church of Scotland.”

St Rollox Church is one of the Church of Scotland’s most diverse congregations and its outreach project has supported asylum seekers and refugees seeking sanctuary in Glasgow from countries like Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq for the last 20 years.

Its new building, a £2.5m community hub church at the heart of the biggest regeneration project in Scotland, opened in October 2019.

Ms Howitt said she and the congregation are delighted with the piece: “The work is very cleverly designed and draws you in when you start to look at it and it makes you think and question what the cross is.”