Emma Talbot:

HOW WE LEARN TO LOVE

About the
Exhibition

For our 2025 major summer exhibition, award-winning artist Emma Talbot (b.1969) assembled a collection of new and recent work that powerfully explored the experience of life; from birth to death.

Talbot works in a variety of media and this show featured examples of her sculpture, painting, animation, drawing and large-scale paintings on silk – a material she explores for its lightweight and expansive properties, along with the fact that it can also be cut, sewn, patched and shaped. Works such as The Human Experience (Your Birth) (2023) and The Human Experience (Your Death) (2023) presented visual epics which not only chart our shared human experiences, but also the increasing lack of connection to nature and the cycles of life.

At the heart of the exhibition was her epic, new installation The Tragedies (2024), which draws on examples of tragedies, such as that of the Ancient Greek story of Medea – who killed her two sons as an act of revenge. The work is a reflection on the extent of unbelievable acts of aggression that exist in times of confrontation, such as the compulsion to kill to retain control.

The exhibition confronted our shifting relationships with technology, language and communication, exploring how, in new forms and guises they can transform public and political narratives. Ultimately, it invited visitors to reflect on what it is to be human.