Christopher Noulton | The Cut: 7 Piccadilly Arcade

Christopher Noulton has been exploring further the subject of life, death, and resurrection, inspired greatly by Stanley Spencer’s The Resurrection, Cookham. Just as Spencer depicted the resurrection in his own village, Noulton too has explored this in his imagined village. In spirit, his vision is not unlike that of Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, the architect who created Portmeirion on the Welsh coast. Williams-Ellis gathered real buildings, fragments, and inspirations from across the country and transplanted them into a setting of his own design, conjuring an entire village from imagination and memory. In a similar way, Noulton’s village is pieced together from buildings he has visited across the land, reassembled in his mind’s eye into a single, dreamlike community.

 

But his vision is also shaped by childhood memories of television and ritual. He grew up watching programmes like The Avengers, The Prisoner, and Doctor Who, all of which often presented seemingly ordinary villages with darker undercurrents, hidden laboratories, secret societies, or surreal twists that unsettled the everyday. These worlds taught him that even the most familiar of streets could harbour strange mysteries. Added to that were his encounters with folk traditions and seasonal rituals, such as the extraordinary May Day celebrations. At Padstow in Cornwall, for example, the whole town bursts into life each year as the “Obby Oss” is paraded through the streets, accompanied by music, dancing, and crowds dressed in white and red. On that one charged day of the year, an ordinary fishing town is transformed into something timeless and ritualistic. Those atmospheres, half celebratory, half uncanny, still feed the fabric of his imagined village.

 

Noulton lost his father when he had just turned one year old. That absence has marked him deeply, shaping a lifelong quest to bring him back to life in some way—through memory, research, genealogy, and imagination. Each thread of history he uncovers, each story pieced together, feels like a small act of resurrection, a way of keeping his father’s presence alive.

 

The cutter girls he features have found a unique way to honour and remember the departed villagers, inspired by the traditions of All Souls’ Day and the Mexican Day of the Dead. Each year, on these sacred occasions, the village comes alive with a tapestry of paper silhouettes adorning the streets, houses, and public spaces. The cutter girls meticulously craft these silhouettes, shaping them to resemble the departed individuals, and even their pets, capturing their essence and spirit. As the sun sets, the village is transformed into a magical realm, the paper effigies casting playful shadows in the moonlight. It is a time of remembrance, celebration, and connection, as the living and the departed are reunited, even if only in spirit. The community gathers, sharing stories and memories of their loved ones, embracing the belief that death is not the end, but a continuation of life in another form. The paper silhouettes become a bridge between realms, a reminder of the unbroken bond between the villagers, past and present.

 

The idea of paper effigies has roots in his own life. He recalls watching his daughter Sinem as a child, carefully snipping out paper-chain people, her scissors releasing figures that came alive as they unfolded. Looking back, that simple childhood play may have planted the seed for the effigy-makers in his paintings. Now an award-winning book designer and illustrator, she continues to harness her skill with scissors, creating intricate three-dimensional paper cut illustrations for books. She is also a muse, appearing in many of his paintings, her presence binding the personal to the imagined.