Active Stillness has developed from a piece of work originally commissioned by the Quaker Organisation, to create a series of images that could communicate their spiritual practice. One of the key qualities they wished the artist to convey was the idea of "active stillness".

Claire recalls: “It was wonderful to float along with this ephemeral concept, pondering how I would link photographs to it. I researched Quaker literature, however this did not lead to any decipherable clues as to which visual route to take. When I went along to a Quaker meeting, I regained some insight. In the silence of the meeting I discovered what active stillness means. In the sphere that surrounds us we should be mindful of what might come to meet us, or in Quaker terms, we are waiting for the spirit to move us.”

Active Stillness brings together new work by Claire McNamee, which reflects on her process of image-making and in collaboration with poet and Hawthornden Fellow, Liz Almond, whose work created during her time at Hawthornden, will also be shown as part of the exhibition. Poet Laureate Carole Ann Duffy has described poetry as a form of secular prayer. Claire McNamee, in this exhibition, hopes to pose questions as to where spiritual thought lies, between art and the everyday.

“It is in the apparent "nothing happening" mode, when one is non-prescriptive, I feel that my best work is produced. How do these shifts in interpretation and mutations of thought cause an image to be made? What processes of exchange give rise to a renewal in perception?”

The exhibition is also timed to coincide with the Peace Studies Department annual Peace Jam, launched this year by the Nobel Peace Laureate, Adolfo Perez Esquivel.