Swinburn associates her artworks with what she calls “anticipated archaeology”: the presence and accumulation of fragments which provide new meaning to the whole that is signified in her works. The deconstructed portraits in ‘An Ode to The Amazons’ have been ripped from the spines of archaeological books, and appear as a collection of mutilated women in an image of cultural catastrophe, for the destruction of a book is comparable to the demolition of history. In recognition of the way narratives were woven as a substitute for the silence of women across time, Swinburn uses this historically significant practice as a metaphor for resistance. As she weaves these delicate and mutilated documents back together, they undergo an important transformation process into a vast and resilient tapestry.

The weaving together of 24 portraits, originally from ancient Greece, which are now displaced and exhibited in institutions across the world is symbolic. Joining this diaspora of emblematic women together, Swinburn creates an image of women coming together in collective resistance from across the world.

This artwork is ‘An Ode to The Amazons’, who, according to Greek mythology, were a tribe of female warriors who were masters in the foundation of ancient temples and civilisations, referenced in the artwork via the Chapel’s architectural design; seen in the arrangement of the portraits as well as the paper marbling which both resemble the mosaics of the Chapel’s sanctuary floor.

With no real evidence on this tribe, and most of the portraits in this work unknown women or ‘Kores’, this ‘Ode to The Amazons’ is an interpretation of a myth, a celebration of female collectives and their contribution to history.