Constance Kent was a female prisoner who created a mosaic in the chancel of St Peter's Church on Portland in the late 19th Century as part of her sentence after confessing to murdering her half brother in her teens.
Doubts around her confession, the complex character of Constance, her intriguing life story, and the relatively rich material available online in the forms of books and films, determined Ilona’s choice of Constance as a research subject.
Ilona’s practice led research, exploring the possibilities of drawings and new processes of working with variety of materials, led to her working in the third dimension, using tissue napkins.
For her final piece she has created a drawing installation, by assembling the tissues using a sewing machine to create a three dimensional mosaic.
Ilona’s work is presented in the bell tower of St Georges Church, Portland. Sadly St Peters Church is in poor repair and not accessible to the public.
