Saint Agnes

Saint Barbara      

      Saint Dorothy

Saint Radegund

Saint Catherine    

Five Saints, was made for Fabulation, an exhibition at the Painted Church (All Saints), Cambridge from 17-31 March 2022. The series is a response to the five female saints depicted in stained glass in the church's chancel: Catherine, Barbara, Dorothy, Radegund and Agnes. Alongside the portraits are a set of small ex-voto offerings for each saint (pictured below).

Rather than drawing on traditional iconography for this series, actresses are instead cast as the saints, thereby highlighting parallels between different kinds of worship. The look of each actress/saint, and the imagery they are accompanied by, picks up on elements of their imprecise biographies, positioning them somewhere between publicity images and dreamy surrealism, whilst at the same time foregrounding their painterly construction.