Within the Walls of Deva, 03 01 2026.

Within the Walls of Deva was an installation shown at Chester Cathedral for two weeks in January 2026.

Painted images and decoupaged typography hung loosely from a rope in a bunting-like arrangement, allowing the work to feel temporary, almost domestic, rather than monumental. The imagery appropriates Romanesque styles and mixes them inconsistently with Victorian realism and fragments of post-modern visual language. Together they suggest a layered, uncertain history of Chester — one that resists centring the Roman occupation as the single defining narrative of the city.

This project has been a challenge for me. The presentation, themes, and methods were new territory, and much of the process involved learning how to speak in a different visual language. In that sense the work is still finding its shape, and perhaps its successors will be more articulate, but I don’t see that as a failure. It feels more like the beginning of a conversation I didn’t know how to have before.

Through the Cloister Window / An accidental double exposure, 03 01 2026.

Working with the Cathedral staff and volunteers has been an excellent experience, and producing a project independently for public display has taught me more than any studio exercise could. At the end of the day, if even one person has felt or learnt something because of what I presented, then the work has done what it needed to do.

Scan the QR code on the poster below for a virtual copy of the installation, complete with high resolution digitised images of the individual pieces displayed.