The appalling spectacle of the cooked cook \u2013 an irreplaceable human consciousness reduced to mere meat \u2013 appears to exemplify what the medievalist Umberto Eco<\/a> called the \u201cbarbaric\u201d medieval in every way. Except that this event did not actually happen in the middle ages (500 to 1500). This is a picture of a Tudor-era atrocity that medieval English law would never have permitted.<\/p>\n Although the middle ages of the exhibition\u2019s title sometimes anchors to the historic period, it primarily lays claim to a collection of tropes that have come to be seen as medieval.<\/p>\n For instance, the exhibition\u2019s statement of intent cites the idea of an artisanal medieval age. This is \u201cthe physical world of the handmade \u2013 that of leatherwork, metalwork, woodwork, painting, ceramics and even baking\u201d. It summons up medieval with a special claim on spirituality via the \u201chuman impulse to find meaning and community\u201d.<\/p>\n The exhibition\u2019s modern artistic interpretations raise further notions of the medieval. Jessica Luostarinen\u2019s paintings, Fitting (2024) and Fitting \u2013 2 (2025), combine the chivalric medieval of knightly adventure with the contemporary and futuristic. Here we see images of an androgynous figure being encased in plate armour that could be interpreted as cyborg-like.<\/p>\n The commonplace medieval sentiment of nostalgia and lament for the transience of worldly things proves remarkably durable, and is explored at length in this exhibition. Many pieces ask \u201cWhere ben they bifore us were\u201d<\/a> (Where are they who lived before us?), in the words of a 13th-century English lyric.<\/p>\n Jakob Rowlinson\u2019s sculpture, The Apogee of Foolishness (2024), includes shoes transformed into grotesque masks. The Prada shoe used to create a death mask sees a medieval moral take modern form. This is a witty reimagining of the memento mori<\/em>, an object that reminds viewers of the transience of worldly goods and of their own, inevitable mortality.<\/p>\n In metal artist Caitlin Hazell\u2019s Pilgrim Badge Replicas (2024), sharp and detailed initial castings \u2013 imitations of the mass-produced badges that medieval pilgrims bought at shrines \u2013 deteriorate into indistinct and fragmentary forms. These tiny objects are a meditation on fragility and the passing of time. <\/p>\n But some of the most successful works do not explicitly cite the medieval. Hazell\u2019s Unknown Individual (2024, rebaked 2026) is a life-sized skeleton which, on further inspection, turns out to be made of bread. It is laid out in a vitrine framed by an assortment of pebbles, shells and driftwood \u2013 a relic of an imaginary past.<\/p>\n Emmanuel Awuni also arouses the sympathetic frisson triggered by coming face to face with apparent human remains. His work Sankofa (2022) \u2013 a word from the Ghanaian Akan language \u201cevoking the idea of reflecting on the past\u201d<\/a> \u2013 is a sculpted head broken open to reveal a golden leaf and a cowrie shell. Despite the implicit violence, its expression is serene. This profoundly emotive object is vulnerable, tender and precious.<\/p>\n As the exhibition thesis says: \u201cThere is an undeniable resurgence of the medieval in contemporary art and culture\u201d \u2013 and especially in contemporary visual art. Other such artworks have been shown at the National Gallery\u2019s 2023 St Francis of Assisi<\/a> exhibition, 2025\u2019s Medieval Relics<\/a> at Green and Stone, and the current Living by the Rule: Contemporary Meets Medieval<\/a> at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich.<\/p>\n Academic medievalists have, on the whole, accepted that it is ungracious to complain if creative engagements of the medieval do not quite match our understandings of the period.<\/p>\n Imagination can know things that scholarship misses. Mapping the contours of what people do with the medieval is more productive than policing it. This exhibition shows that the medieval, however it is understood, is still able to act in the present day.<\/p>\nWhere are they now?<\/h2>\n
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\n Huxley Parlour\/Jakob Rowlinson<\/span><\/span>
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