Messenger's Lament

Messenger’s Lament was a live performance made in Walsingham, Norfolk that examined that place’s history of iconoclasm and the pilgrimage of infertile believers. The protagonist was a smashed stained-glass saint, who laments unanswered prayer. This figure also appears in my later video work, Holding Shards.

This character walked the Pilgrim’s Way in the opposite direction to convention, pushing a mirrored trolley to look at the sky. Mirrored trolleys of this kind are often found in cathedrals, for looking at the ceilings. 

The work was informed by my ongoing auto-ethnographic research into experiences of infertility, and belief systems and medical approaches pertaining to this.  

Commissioned for In Search of the Miraculous was convened by artist Anne Bean as part of Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2023.