�y��vlog

Young British photographer Alys Tomlinson won first prize in the Discovery category of the 2018 Sony World photography awards for her black and white series Ex Voto, which was shot at religious pilgrimage sites in France, Ireland and Poland.

This made it all the more charming to learn there are 360 churches on the island, many of them little chapels built by petitioners who had received the prosperity they had prayed for — a kind of Greek Orthodox ex voto.

Two additional clumps support each canvas as it leans against the wall like some icon or ex voto, reminding us that painting is a universal, not Western, art form.

Though the piece contains glimmers of the semiotic wordplay that Mr. Johns engaged in with his neo-Dada works, “Ex Voto” feels like a facile latter-day version of the exercise.

To its curative powers many crutches and ex voto objects, hung round the well, as in the Lourdes Grot, bear ample witness.