Louise Benton is a painter, sculptor and printmaker investigating the intersection of sexuality and catholicism.
Prior to her studies at the Royal College of Art, Benton completed a foundation in Fine Art at the University for the Creative Arts, and holds an MA History of Art from the University of Edinburgh. She has shown recently at Studio 1.1, Shoreditch and Greatorex Street, Whitechapel.
Louise Benton (b.1995) uses the visual language of catholicism to tell contemporary stories of sexuality and pleasure. Her reference points touch upon personal narratives and memories of growing up within these belief systems and their cathedrals. In a nod to the materials that build places of worship, she adorns glass with mythological stories of mermaids and cherubs before fusing them together with molten lead to create stained-glass windows. Other times, her images will be carved and glazed across ceramic pots, standing upright as an urn, or when flipped upside down, appearing as a buttplug. It is within this space of subversion that Benton toys with the levels of repression built into the architectures themselves, playing with them until their ’sacred language’ is broken and something more divine and truthful appears. Through this recurring clash of the Madonna and the Whore, her work aims to probe the full feminine spectrum and find a space in which her imaginings celebrate and accept the contemporary woman, questioning but also elevating them from their censored and repressed history to a place in which pleasure and freedom is more valued than chastity and control.
Warning: This section contains mature or explicit content.
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