The Pursuit of Love, 2026, Copper-foiled stained glass
Contemporary Relics
La Bibi Gallery, Mallorca, September-November 2026
‘The Pursuit of Love’ brings together the visual language of mythology, Catholicism and contemporary romantic imagery to explore the enduring desire to find love. Five stained glass cherubs hold copper arrows, each named for a quality sought in a partner, yet their arrows point in different directions, indicating that there is no easy path in the search for intimacy in the contemporary world. Drawing on both the mischievous figure of Cupid and the familiar kitsch imagery of Valentine’s Day consumerism, the work plays with the tension between sincere longing and the increasingly commercialised language through which romance is expressed.
The work emerges from Louise Benton’s wider engagement with the visual and material language of Catholicism, using religious forms to explore contemporary narratives of sexuality, femininity, desire and power. Here, the cherub becomes a figure suspended between sacred and secular, simultaneously an object of devotional reverence and a playful emblem of romantic fantasy. The use of stained glass reinforces this ambiguity. Traditionally associated with sacred space, glass transforms the figures into luminous objects, elevating the familiar iconography of the Valentine’s Cupid into something worthy of worship.
At the centre of the installation, the wandering arrows finally converge upon a small glass heart, pierced and held aloft like a relic. This culmination evokes the gestures of prayer and offering found within devotional traditions, while also exposing the almost absurd faith placed in the idea of romantic fulfilment. The heart becomes both object of desire and object of worship, suggesting that in a world where intimacy can feel increasingly elusive, the search for love itself can become a form of ritual. Through this collision of mythology, religious imagery and kitsch, ‘The Pursuit of Love’ reimagines familiar symbols of romance as a contemporary mythology, asking what we continue to believe in and what we are willing to worship, in the hope of being loved.
