27/05/2026
Artist Highlight - Martina La Trobe Bateman is one of the artists in residence as part of our current exhibition Manuscripts & The Mind: How we read & respond to the written word.
Martina La Trobe Bateman is a visual artist and theologian. In her artistic practice and research, she is interested in epistemological and relational terms. She considers the ways in which seeing can be reciprocal, relational, and formative. Her practice spans installation, photographic processes, papermaking, text, bookmaking and painting. Currently undertaking a PhD in Theology through Creative Practice at the University of Glasgow, she considers how a relational encounter with the impossibly material Word of God might be hosted in and through the intertwined event space of the imagination, the text, and its presence as distinct objects in the world, though the paradigm of photography and the process of (art-)making.
'The New English Bible' is a sculptural form made of Bible pages from 'The New English Bible' (Oxford University Press, 1970) and rainwater. As a form of prayer, the artist makes new paper from a single printed bible and rainwater, in a continual process of pulping, making, re-pulping, and re-making. The work considers the materiality of the text and its relationship with ink, script, the page, and reader, as it explores the themes of creation, holiness, revelation and hiddenness. Her work questions where text and paratext begins, and whether form shapes meaning.
As part of her residency, La Tribe Bateman facilitated a drop in paper making workshop in December (Image 4), and a 2 day intensive paper making workshop (Images 5-7).
Read more about Manuscripts & The Mind here: https://chesterbeatty.ie/exhibitions/manuscripts-and-the-mind/
