Category: Papercutting

Call for Papers: Bible and Visual Culture unit at SBL (International Meeting)

Posted on by Jason Goroncy in Conference, Culture, Digital Art, Drawing, Education, Iconography, Multimedia, Painting, Papercutting, Photography, Street art
Margaret Preston, The Expulsion, 1952. Colour stencil, gouache on thin black card with gouache hand colouring, 60.5 x 48.5 cm. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

We are pleased to invite you to the Bible and Visual Culture unit meeting, taking place 5–9 July 2026 in Adelaide, Australia, as part of the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting.

The Bible and Visual Culture unit is dedicated to the critical study of how biblical texts, themes, and figures are interpreted, adapted, and reimagined through visual media—from ancient mosaics and manuscript illuminations to contemporary film, television, video games, advertising, and public art. These visual interpretations have shaped, and continue to shape, the ways biblical texts are received, interpreted, and contested within the wider cultural imagination.

The unit is intentionally interdisciplinary, drawing on art history, film and theatre studies, media studies, musicology, gender studies, trauma studies, postcolonial criticism, and more. Whether examining biblical motifs in cinema, exploring representation in public art, or analyzing the commodification of biblical imagery in advertising, it highlights the interpretive power of the visual and its capacity to illuminate aspects of biblical reception.

We warmly invite established scholars and PhD candidates to submit a proposal on any topic related to the visual reception, interpretation, or representation of biblical texts—historical or contemporary, theoretical or methodological. Presentations will be thirty minutes, including discussion.

Given our location in Adelaide, we particularly welcome papers that engage with Australian art featured in Australian galleries, museums, and public spaces. How have Australian artists interpreted biblical narratives? What role does biblical imagery play in Australia’s visual culture, from colonial-era works to contemporary Indigenous perspectives? This meeting offers a unique opportunity to explore these questions in context.

Paper proposals should be submitted here and should include your name, institutional affiliation, paper title, and an abstract of approximately 250 words. Proposals may be submitted at any time before 15 January 2026. All presenters must register for the SBL International Meeting. Further details about the Adelaide meeting are available on the SBL website.

Amanda Dillon and Jason Goroncy
Coordinators, Bible and Visual Culture Unit

Dappled Shadows Underfoot

Posted on by Jason Goroncy in Papercutting, Poetry

It’s been a difficult year my friends.
So I do the only thing I know how to do,
Like a stubborn frustrated buddha,
I sat. I knelt. I prayed.
And as always, I cut.
Quickly I became aware of two things:
Pain
And time.
Two things that translate strangely to the screen.
Knowing, I’ll forget the pain: the cold floor, the bruises, and the way my legs screamed
‘be here’.

And I’ll forget the hours I sat,
now condensed to minutes.
Seconds depicting moments.
Leaping into the future
Fitting tightly into the screen.
I have been thinking about time a lot.
How people say, in hindsight, it took me 10 years to really know what that period of my life was about. And how
that simple sentence erases seconds of self doubt, minutes of struggle, and hours of tears.
I’ve been doubting, and struggling, and crying. A lot.

I know why I cut paper, it helps me find my edges.
It hedges me in when I start to leak out
I just cut away what isn’t there.
The stuff that isn’t ‘the thing’.
Until only ‘the thing’ is left.
And yet,
I will always know the perimeter of what has been discarded than the evidence that has been left behind.

Mostly,
I cut in silence.
A quiet prayer. An emptying. A time of no self.
As I mark out the thoughts, broken lines of poetry, and old traumas.
I thought about the word ‘present’ and the word ‘present’ being all a game of inflection and yet how differently
they speak to the world.
Because I know I can present well, it is a safety net that has gotten me through the last difficult long year.
But I also know that someone that presents well, can present as present.
And how I can only get better at the latter as I let go of the former.

So here I am,
And I’m thinking about Moses now.
And I’m thinking about this burning bush that I am carving.
Be here. Be here.
I am,
I am.
I am that I am.
I’m always thinking about God.
And the way I am entranced by a tree branch as much as the light that filters through
And the dappled shadows cast underfoot.

℘℘℘℘

Pearl Taylor is a Melbourne-based visual artist, art therapist and Uniting Church youth facilitator, invested in the ways faith forms our personal narrative. Pearl’s art practice is informed by a pinch contemplative traditions, a healthy dose of the radically-inclusive, and a touch of humour. As she dabbles in theological spaces, it is through creativity that she expresses, connects, and invites others in. She lives on Wurundjeri land.