Exhibition: 'Keep Me Safe' opens at Farm Street

l-r: Fatima, Sr Natalia with artist Marguerite Horner

'Keep Me Safe' - an exhibition of paintings by Marguerite Horner evoking memories of the Calais Jungle Refugee Camp was launched at Farm Street last night. Ms Horner's stark monochrome images, painted in oil on linen - of shelters improvised from sheets of polythene and scrap wood, and figures against stark winter landscapes - bring home the harshness of conditions in the camp.

A parishioner at Our Lady of Grace and St Edward church in Chiswick, west London, Marguerite visited the camp several times in 2014, with members of the parish prayer group. Fellow parishioner Jeanette described the first time they visited the camp, on a very cold windy day. They were shocked to see kids walking with no shoes. "We had brought food and clothes, but we were told not to open the boot of the car because we would be swamped. So instead we put on extra layers of clothes and went walking and gave people clothes when we could see they needed them." Several of the paintings show the refugees in their ill-fitting but warm new clothes. Jeanette said they sat together with some of the refugees who shared food with them and talked and prayed together.

The theme of prayer ran through the evening. Fatima Alves, another member of the prayer group, lived in the Grenfell Tower with her family. Fatima gave a harrowing description of how she and her husband and children had managed to escape from their 13th floor flat, and watched with horror as they saw their home going up in flames. Then Fatima realised she had a pregnant friend and her husband on the 21st floor. She telephoned them several times urging them to leave but eventually the line went dead. As the situation few more chaotic, the family who were staying with friends, just knelt down and prayed the Rosary. Two days later they learned that their friends had survived, although they had lost the baby. Fatima is certain that their prayer that night saved their friends. The next day, her daughter went to school and took a GCSE exam. (She's passed with Grade As!) Fatima said: "Don't say to someone you have a problem - say you have a friend in God. "

The final speaker was Combini Sister Natalia Gomez, who described how she had set up the Cenacle prayer group in Chiswick. In the past she said she had experienced very poor conditions working as a missionary in South Sudan, Uganda and the Congo, but prayer always helped her through her journeys. "Prayer is not something isolated" she said. "It goes together with action, which is why we got involved with the Calais refugees - as well as other justice and peace projects."

The exhibition 'Keep Me Safe' runs to 1 November, in the Ground Floor Gallery, Farm Street Church Hall, Mayfair, London.

Read more about Marguerite Horner and her work here: www.margueritehorner.moonfruit.com