The Cailleach and the Pleasure Convent by Evelyn Albrow

In this new body of work for Collect 2026, I continue to explore alternative matriarchal utopias. The past, present and future meet on celestial and earth- bound planes, creating dreamy worlds inhabited by monsters, matrons, saints and goddesses. 

Inspired by contemporary and historical spiritual and secular utopias, from Beguinages (founded in 1200s) to everyday communes like the Maison de Babayagas (set up in 2014 in Paris), this work explores ideas around community, solidarity, and feminism. 

The Calliach, a powerful, ancient Gaelic matriarch,  guides them on journeys across the sea in search of new beginnings and their own terrestrial paradise, where, on the horizon, a Beguinage style community offers them respite within walled gardens. They can avail themselves of large baths, choir stalls, and a well-equipped alchemy workshop to prepare for their insurgency against the male-instigated apocalypse.

The Cailleach and the Pleasure Convent

Angela Carter once said: ‘a free woman in an unfree society will be a monster’.  Here, my voyagers seek sanctuary, turning to the Cailleach, Red Sprites, and other female mythical monsters. Coracles light the way, guiding them safely to the utopian matriarchal commune on the hill. Nyx, the primordial goddess of night, and Eos, goddess of dawn, both create a cosmic scene at the top of the vessel, pulling the sun up and the moon down above a giantess, whose open legs release a lightning storm of Red Sprites onto a battleship. In autumn 2025, rare sightings of Red Sprite lightning storms over New Zealand were transmitted all over social media. Sprites are known to be mischievous water spirits so they belonged here.   

Inspiration for my creatures come from Konrad von Megenberg’s 15th Century woodcuts, revealing what the medieval mindset feared inhabited the unexplored corners of the Earth. The name is a nod to The Convent of Pleasure, a 17th century play by Margeret Cavendish. In it,  the heroine Lady Happy invites 20 women to live a cloistered life without men, creating a separatist community.

Other inspiration came from Flemish tapestries of swan boats, Celtic axe votives, the Silkstead head, French 15th century illuminated manuscripts of Noah’s ark and the flood, and an ancient Greek vase ‘Lekythos with Helios, Nyx, Eos and Herakles’ 500 B.C attributed to the Sappho Painter.     

Stoneware vessel.

66H x 30W cm

2026