Wing and a Prayer

Wing and a Prayer is an exhibition about faith…sort of. In an age of overconsumption and digital disconnection, the artists here salvage fragments of our throwaway culture and elevate them into sacred form. It’s a meditation on the fragile intersections between belief, memory and the rubbish we leave behind.

Here, greasy chicken buckets become devotional fountains. Concrete rubble morphs into relics worthy of reverence. Houseflies—those grimy gatekeepers of decay—are canonised as saints. The artists turn trash into treasure, drawing from the afterlife of fast food, plastic packaging and personal detritus to summon something almost divine.

Featuring work by Isabella Lepoamo, Sacha Lees, Scott Eady, Siân Quennell Torrington, and Sophia Smolenski, Wing and a Prayer asks what the sacred means in a world built to be disposable. Their reference points—takeaway containers, reclaimed copper, fragments of demolition—are the stuff of modern ruin. Yet in their hands, the discarded becomes devotional. These artists conjure tender and strangely powerful altars from the everyday, finding grace in grease, light in landfill, and beauty somewhere between angel wings and hot wings.

Isabella Lepoamo, My Grandfather’s Hands to KFC Fountain (2024). Bronze, KFC buckets, waterpump. Photo courtesy of Zac Whiteside.