God Loves a Trier — Katie Mann

Visual artist Katie Mann brings God Loves a Trier to the ambulatory of Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral: large paintings on raw canvas, hung like religious banners, shown alongside a plinth of embroidered text.

The exhibition is the culmination of Mann’s Master’s by Research in Fine Art at MTU, How Painting and Sewing can Serve as Theological Enquiry. Mann positions her enquiry within the Methodist Quadrilateral — Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience — as grounds for personal theological investigation, contextualising artistic making as a mode of critical, reflective and spiritual enquiry.

For this body of work Mann documented the everyday through digital and analogue photography, drawing, journalling and notetaking: a continuous process of reflection and recontextualisation that informed her painting and embroidery practice. Implementing abstraction through oil painting, she mediates the tensions between sacred imagery and novel visual theological enquiry, presenting space to both artist and viewer for contemplation and interpretation.

Admission is free. The exhibition may be viewed during cathedral opening hours: Monday to Saturday, 9.00am–5.00pm; Sunday, 12.30–2.00pm and 4.30–5.30pm.