Saints Alive

It's ages ago now, but we went to the National Gallery and quite by chance realised that Michael Landry's exceedingly odd but also exceedingly fun exhibition Saints Alive was on, as it still is (and is free to go in to) until 24th November. The bland description of 'a display of kinetic sculptures made from recycled materials' belies how wickedly amusing and strangely devout, in a mad way, the show is. Mr Landry was given virtual carte blanche to come up with a display interpreting the art of the Gallery, and while wandering around was struck, as he explains, by the religious content of so much of the collection and in particular the presence of Christian saints. From there he looked into their legends and, as we could have told him, some of those legends are very bizarre indeed.

So here you are greeted by a gigantic statue of St Apollonia who, when the visitor presses a pad, yanks out one of her own teeth with a pair of pincers. Through a doorway you come across a fibreglass torso atop a strange contraption of gears, wheels and chains which beats itself on the chest very dramatically with a stone, representing St Jerome attempting to combat sexual distractions. Further along St Peter Martyr's cranium is being perpetually chopped with a scimitar, while the upper body of St Francis of Assisi sits atop a collection box - pop in a coin and he will obligingly beat himself on the head with a crucifix. The most extreme contribution is the one inspired by St Thomas which, obedient to St John's Gospel Chapter 20 verse 27, consists of an arm endlessly jabbing into the side of Christ with such vigorous force that the entire thing actually lifts off the ground and clatters back down again with a bang. By November I expect Jesus will actually have a hole in his side. St Catherine is represented by an enormous spiked wheel (what else?) which you can have a go at turning, comparatively mild compared to the rest of it. There are any number of collages decorating the walls too.

I actually thought this was a huge hoot and not at all blasphemous, but then that's me.