I recently visited and Exhibition at West Yorkshire Print Workshop by Alan Birch called 'Later day Saints'. Click here to view some of the saints he has created on his own website.
He was inspired by wood carvings of saints at the Wellcome Collection at the Science Museum in London.
He has used references from books and religious paintings and sculptures to create a collection of contemporary saints. These saints make reference to modern day objects or activities to which people are devoted or which are worshipped by everyday people. Superstition is still alive and well today and people probably would pray to Saint Lotto if they though this would help them to come into money.
The artist has created over 90 monoprints from which he selected 52 to become etchings and hand coloured drypoints.
The overall concept is interesting although I must admit I have seen something similar before in which modern day celebrities such as Simon Cowell became saints in the paintings of a fellow OCA student Adrian Eaton.
However, the prints themselves didn't really excite me - there were so many of them all of the same size and apparently rapidly executed. They all seemed to merge into one to me - maybe that's partly the point - a comment on the crass mass production of today's society and the fact that we worship false idols sold to us via the mass media.
Birch has certainly been astute in identifying symbols of modern culture. Many of his saints evoked a wry smile of recognition from me for example Saint Saleus if Primark, Saint Selfie-Stick and Saint Duvet. The one I identified with the most was Saint Remain - the modern day British Saint Sebastian who is pierced by the nationalistic Union Jack arrows of the Brexiteers. Oh dear :-(
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