‘The Pilgrimage Bowl’
September 2025
Temporal | Spatial | Spiritual
Artist in Residence Exhibition
St Julian’s Church
This year the Julian Shrine in Norwich has welcomed visitors from every continent, making pilgrimage to this ancient and holy place. To celebrate these far-flung pilgrims the theme for our exhibition this month centres on Julian of Norwich and the city of Norwich as a pilgrimage destination, past and present.
Norwich was a bustling, international port city in the Middle Ages. Just a stone’s throw away from St Julian’s Church is the River Wensum, once a busy shipping lane taking and bringing goods and people to Europe and beyond. Debra’s Pilgrimage Bowl celebrates not only medieval pilgrim links to Norwich and Norfolk, but also modern pilgrimage to the Julian Shrine.
Like all of Debra’s bowls in her series ‘Bowls in a Fragile World’, these paper bowls are made from junk mail and used packaging, taken in this case from the waste generated at the Shrine and polluted with residual chemicals and plastics, echoing the pollution we see around us every day. In September’s bowl, Debra has incorporated spices from around the world, a theme which connects Julian’s medieval past and our global present, and gives the bowl its fascinating colour and texture.
In additional to the Pilgrim Bowl, Debra has created a series of unique artworks on display (and for sale) at our visitor centre, also on the theme of pilgrimage, all through the lens of her overall theme during her residency of ’Temporal, Spatial, Spiritual’. Join us this month to explore the exhibition at the Shrine, and while away an hour reading in our library with a cup of tea or browsing our bookshop.
All profits from the sale of any artworks goes directly to funding our building and restoration campaign.
