About this artwork

This work consists of a scale model in cardboard of every ‘Place of Worship’ listed in the 2004 edition of the Edinburgh Yellow Pages telephone directory. The models represent buildings in an area including Lothian, Fife and the Borders. The resulting work is a snapshot of Scotland through its places of religious meeting; churches, cathedrals, synagogues, mosques, Salvation Army halls and temples. The buildings are displayed without regard for their real life location or religious connections. The artist was influenced by an essay by the nineteenth-century artist and writer John Ruskin called ‘The Seven Lamps of Architecture’. Ruskin stated that ‘It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration: not the gift but the giving’.

Updated before 2020

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  • artist:
    Nathan Coley (born 1967) Scottish
  • title:
    The Lamp of Sacrifice, 286 Places of Worship, Edinburgh 2004
  • date created:
    2004
  • materials:
    286 cardboard models; 2 photocopied and annotated pages from Yellow Pages (Edinburgh)
  • measurements:
    42.00 x 29.50 cm (each page size); dimensions variable (cardboard models size)
  • object type:
  • credit line:
    A Fruitmarket Gallery / Bloomberg Commission: purchased with funds from the Cecil and Mary Gibson Bequest 2004
  • accession number:
    GMA 4750
  • gallery:
  • subject:
  • glossary:
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Nathan Coley

Nathan Coley