Spring Equinox, in the Welsh Marches.  The Earth swings on sunlit hinges and the church bells ring.  The Demented Goddess raises her post-raving head. Having promised the vicar, a pal in left-wing politics, to attend an Easter Service, she tumbles downstairs, across damp snowdrops and into a cold pew. Seven Christians smile at her. Thus begins a  surprising sermon by her white-haired comrade, referring to God as “He, She, It, whatever-you-call-it” – surely one of very few vicars breaking with the accepted form of address in the Church of England.  Internally, the Goddess applauds.

Spring is no time for the status quo.  At Easter and the Equinox, blood is turned into bunnies, plumes of gold and red dye shoot into Indian skies for Holi.

Celebrating life in death, Easter is rather MGM – rather queer (is there anything more camp than a chocolate egg?)… tempting us to unearth icons who, like Christ, flouted taboos.

Jesus, or Yeshua, as his friends called him, fraternised with prostitutes and lived in a commune. Like Yeshua, Katharine Hepburn is famous but little known; Billie Holiday’s bisexuality and modernity has been buried by the cannon; the Indian dancer Ram Gopal, adored by Queen Mary, Paris and New York, has been forgotten and must be resurrected.  It is our honour to reintroduce you to three artists whose inversions of gender, race and sexuality present radical ways of being.

Billie Holiday (pic. Charles Hewitt/Picture Post/Getty Images).