This exhibition is about close looking and reading. Six artists and writers of different backgrounds have been specially commissioned to write responses to six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection. Renee Gladman, Imani Mason Jordan, Heather Phillipson, Julie Ezelle Patton, Marina Warner and Osman Yousefzada respond to works by Ayan Farah, Ellen Gallagher, Emma Talbot, Eva Hesse, Paula Rego and Prem Sahib with texts that span from poetry to storytelling.
The Roberts Institute of Art brings together six artists and writers with six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection. Each writer has been invited to select and study a single artwork from the Collection to develop new texts, which span from poetry to storytelling. The exhibition is part of our commitment to bringing in diverse perspectives to an internationally significant collection.
This exhibition is a development of our ongoing Collection Study series – case-studies of individual works from the Collection. In this series, we encourage writers to think with and write alongside the work, using the encounter to experiment with their written response. Reflecting on what ‘to study’ means, the series is rooted in both senses of the word: of paying attention to a particular subject and work done for practice or experiment.
A compendium of various voices not bound by one theme or overarching idea, the exhibition shows the breadth of textual responses to works of art, while allowing works from the collection to expand and inspire the writer’s own practice.
About the artists
Ayan Farah’s (b. 1978) practice reflects on themes of identity, visibility and oppression in a global world, often drawing upon her Somali-Swedish heritage and itinerant outlook. Within each painting disparate world-views merge, oppose each other, or co-exist, rejecting linear narratives.
Farah travels constantly to research, gather and grow organic pigments and dyes from across the globe: from Dead Sea mud to Swedish clay, Mexican terracotta and home-grown indigo and marigold. Using these she treats vintage fabrics, often sourced from nineteenth-century homes and bearing traces of their history. She lives and works in Stockholm.
Ellen Gallagher (b. 1965) is an American artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses painting, drawing, collage and celluloid-based projections. Moving between the real world, history and myth, her work examines cultural narratives, nature and identity. Drawing on a wide set of influences, spanning from Agnes Martin to advertising aimed at African Americans, Gallagher’s compositions challenge conventions through a process of accumulation and erasure, resulting in textured and layered surfaces that frequently incorporate carving, inlaying, mounting, printing, blotting and inscription.
Gallagher has been featured in exhibitions at major institutions globally, including the Tate Modern and Centre Pompidou, and her work is in the collection of both The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA, New York. She lives and works between Rotterdam and New York.
Emma Talbot (b. 1969) is a British artist who predominantly works with drawing, painting, and installation. Talbot's work connects emotions and memories to myths, poetry and current events, which she transforms into a dreamlike world through her fluid style. Through the combination of text, images and patterns, she addresses contemporary issues, such as feminism, capitalism, technology and our relationship with the environment.
In March 2020, she won the eighth Max Mara Art Prize for Women, which resulted in a solo exhibition at The Whitechapel Gallery in London and Collezione Maramotti in Italy, both in 2022.
Eva Hesse (1936-1970) was a pioneering German-American sculptor known for her contributions to post-minimalism. Working in materials that were soft and malleable, like latex, felt and plastics, Hesse’s use of unconventional mediums created works that were both vulnerable and alive due to their intrinsic unpredictable nature. The emotional depth and psychological intensity imbued in Hesse’s practice played a pivotal role in a period dominated by minimalism.
Hesse’s untimely death at age 34 resulted in a brief, but hugely influential career that helped reshape the artistic landscape. Her oeuvre exerted a significant impact on several generations of younger artists and has been widely exhibited in major institutions globally.
Paula Rego (1935-2022) was a Portuguese-British artist known for her emotionally charged figurative paintings. Rego’s work frequently drew inspiration from literature and folklore, interweaving personal and political themes. She explored human relationships through intricate subjects like female identity and power dynamics with her distinct style that often blended realism and abstraction.
Exhibited globally, Rego became one of Europe’s most prominent figurative painters. Addressing important conversations about feminism and societal narratives through her layered narratives, her work sparked influential debates on female agency. The Abortion series, 1998–99, is considered to have influenced Portugal’s 2007 vote to legalise abortion. She lived and worked in London.
Prem Sahib (b.1982) works in sculpture, installation, performance, events, photography and sound. They graduated from the Slade in 2006 and the Royal Academy Schools in 2013. Often minimal and sparse in color, Sahib’s work explores themes including relationships, intimacy and sexuality, desire, repulsion, clubbing, community, alienation and confinement. Their work is informed by an interest in the architecture of meeting places, particularly for gay and queer communities.
Mixing the personal and political, abstraction and figuration, their formalism is suggestive of the body as well as its absence, drawing attention to traces of touch and frameworks of looking. They live and work in London.
About the writers
Heather Phillipson (b. 1978) was nominated for the Turner Prize 2022. Recent projects include: a new commission for Art Night 2023 in partnership with Art Fund's Wild Escape programme and the BBC archive; Tate Britain's Duveen Galleries commission, London (2021-22); the Fourth Plinth commission, Trafalgar Square (2020-22) and a major project for Art on the
Underground's flagship site at Gloucester Road station in 2018. Phillipson received the Film London Jarman Award in 2016 and the European Short Film Festival selection from the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2018. In 2024, Phillipson will present a new commission for the Imperial War Museum's 14-18 Now Legacy Fund in partnership with Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea, a major solo show at Kunsthalle St Annen in Lübeck, Germany, and produce a new permanent sculpture with Hospital Rooms for Hellesdon Hospital, Norwich. She is also an award-winning poet. She lives and works in London.
Imani Mason Jordan (b.1992) is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, editor and curator interested in poetics and performance. Alongside Rabz Lansiquot they are one half of Languid Hands, who are lead curators of the artistic programme at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning. Recent independent projects include TREAD/MILL: WIP (Somerset House Studios 2021, and Aspen Art Museum, 2022); ATLANTIC RAILTON: LIVE with Ain Bailey (Serpentine Pavilion, 2021) & WELCOME NOTE IN A WELCOME SPEECH with Libita Sibungu (Gasworks, 2019; Spike Island, 2020; Sensing the Planet / Serpentine, 2021). Imani is the author of the pamphlet Objects Who Testify (PSS, 2019) as well as numerous articles, reviews, essays, poems, plays and love letters, some of which they have published. They live and work in London.
Julie Ezelle Patton (b.1956) is the author of A Garden Per Verse (or What Else do You Expect from Dirt?), and Teething on Type. Other words have appeared in I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues); Sarah Riggs’s The Nerve Epistle, About Place Journal: Rust Belt Tales; and Cecilia Vicuna's Sound Quipu. Womb Room Tomb, an immersive “architext” opened to the public in the Front Triennial (2018). Julie has appeared at the Stone; Arts for Arts in NYC; the Festival Internacional de Poesía in Medellín, Colombia; Tamaas, Paris, France; La Bâtie-Festival de de Genève; and many other venues and festivals. Her living-sculpture Let it Bee Ark Hive is highlighted in a forthcoming Chicago Review edition. J Walk'n thru the Alphabet, a collection of creative projects (1979 to present), debuts in Nightboat Books, 2025. Julie is a Foundation for Contemporary Art (Poetry), Cleveland Arts Prize, and Acker Award recipient, and a Doan Brook Watershed Hero, among other awards. Once her decades-long advocacy of the life and work of Russell Atkins had its intended effect, she moved on to protecting the visual arts legacy of painters Virgie Patton and Theresa Ramey, now on view, by appointment, at the Cleve Museum of Art, located between a Middle Passage reef, South Carolina Whipping Tree, and Permanent Rust Belt grief. You can hear her pour her art out in ‘in-the-moment' compositions bridging musical and literary worlds, solo or collaboratively with creative stalwarts Janice Lowe, Nasheet Waits, the Bookies, Vinie Burrows, Will Alexander, Nhojj; and the Ad Hoc Collective for Improvising Mourning Technologies for Future Grief with Abou Farman, Leo Caraballo, and Sholegh Asgary. She lives and works in Cleveland, U.S.
Marina Warner (b.1946) is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, historian and mythographer, who works across genres and cultures exploring myths and stories. Recent work has focused particularly on the magic of fairy tales and the Arabian Nights, including Stranger Magic (2011), and Once Upon a Time (2014). In Fly Away Home: Stories (2015) she draws on mythic predecessors, translating them into contemporary significance. In 2015 she was awarded the prestigious Holberg Prize and was also Chair of the judging panel for the Man Booker International Book Prize. She is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls, and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London. In March 2017, Warner was elected as the Royal Society of Literature's 19th – and first female – president, succeeding Colin Thubron in the post. Her Forms of Enchantment: Writings on Art and Artists was published by Thames & Hudson in September 2018. In March 2018 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy. She lives and works in London.
Osman Yousefzada’s (b. 1977) practice revolves around modes of storytelling, merging autobiography with fiction and ritual. His work is concerned with the representation and rupture of the migrational experience and makes reference to socio-political issues of today. These themes are explored through moving image, installations, text works, sculpture, garment making and performance.
Yousefzada is a research practitioner at the Royal College of Art, London and a visiting fellow at Cambridge University. His work has been shown at international institutions including: Whitechapel Gallery, London; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (solo 2018); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, V&A (solo 2022): Wapping Project, London; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; Ringling Museum, Florida; Lahore Museum, Pakistan; Design Museum, London; Lahore Biennale, Pakistan; and Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh.
Yousefzada’s contemporary art practice has been described as ‘defiant’, where the participating bodies throughout his work are presented as part objects that refuse to identify or conform. Most recently, his series of solo interventions titled What Is Seen & What Is Not was shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London. Across three site-specific works, this commission responded to the 75th anniversary of Pakistan independence and explored themes of displacement, movement, migration and climate change. He lives and works in London.
Renee Gladman (b. 1971) is a writer and artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of poetry, prose, drawing and architecture. She is the author of fourteen published works, including a cycle of novels about the city-state Ravicka and its inhabitants, the Ravickians, as well as three collections of drawings, Prose Architectures (2017) One Long Black Sentence, a series of white-ink drawings on black paper, indexed by Fred Moten (2020) and Plans for Sentences, an image/text-based meditation on black futurity and other choreographies of gathering (2022). My Lesbian Novel, a work of fiction and autobiography, is forthcoming in 2024. Recent essays and visual work have appeared in
POETRY, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Granta, Harper's, BOMB magazine, e-flux and n+1. Gladman’s first solo exhibition of her drawings, The Dreams of Sentences, opened in fall 2022 at Wesleyan University. She has been awarded fellowships, artist grants and residencies from the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Lannan Foundation and KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), among others, and is the recipient of a 2021 Windham-Campbell prize in fiction. She lives and works in New England, U.S.
