poíēsis: an exhibition by Tom de Freston

de Freston has long painted his wife, the award-winning novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave, often in shifting literary and mythological roles which see her in the guise of Ophelia, Lady Macbeth and Eurydice. These portraits form part of the couple’s long-standing multimedia collaborations across books, films, graphic novels and performance. But the works in poíēsis emerged from a period of profound personal upheaval. Following Millwood Hargrave’s pregnancy loss in 2020 and six subsequent miscarriages, the couple welcomed their daughter in 2023.

Detail from I think she is my shadow (2024), mixed media on canvas, 200x150cm. Copyright: the artist.

The paintings of poíēsis are at once elegiac and luminous: dreamlike visions of bodies in flux — pregnant, dissolving, resurfacing — bearing witness to loss while insisting on resilience and wonder, not least because their display in the Museum of Classical Archaeology's Cast Gallery lays bare the absence of the pregnant body in the classical canon. The works challenge us to look beyond the traditional boundaries of the classical, to find space for the ethical and emotional stakes which are mobilised in the body as a site of vulnerability and transformation. These works do not aestheticise grief; they metabolise it, fusing biography with myth in a language that is raw, tender and fiercely contemporary. Staged within shifting architectures — grids, interiors, landscapes — where shadows, footprints and reaching hands interrupt the pictorial space, in our Gallery they recontextualise the antique within the shifting ground of an emotional hinterland.

Detail from On the edge of the forest (2024), mixed media on canvas, 200x150cm. Copyright: the artist.

Poíēsis also marks a significant moment in de Freston’s career. Over two decades, his work has been shown widely and met with sustained critical care, establishing him as a painter of rare emotional acuity and intellectual depth. Here, something feels newly distilled. The confidence of a long-held practice meets a quiet risk: an openness that allows painting and writing to move closer than ever before. Following the publication of Strange Bodies (Granta, 2023), de Freston’s work now exists in a genuinely hybrid form.

The paintings speak intimately to Strange Bodies and to the artists and writers who inhabit its pages – most enduringly Titian, whose poíēsis paintings offer a historical echo. Like Titian, de Freston understands painting as a form of poetry. Fragments of Kiran’s Eurydice poems, first written for their retelling of the Orpheus myth, now reverberate through these works with an uncanny resonance.

Detail from Waiting for an arrival (2024) mixed media on canvas, 200x150cm. Copyright: the artist.

Tom de Freston’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Classical Archaeology marks a meaningful return, both professionally and personally. The museum was the site of his first institutional exhibition in 2008, and this new show brings him back to Cambridge, where he studied History of Art at the University of Cambridge. Following his studies, de Freston was appointed Levy Plumb Artist in Residence at Christ’s College and later undertook a Leverhulme-funded residency, further deepening his ties to the city. The exhibition therefore represents a full-circle moment, reconnecting his early career, academic foundations, and personal life, as it was also in Cambridge, in 2008, that de Freston first met his wife.

Works are for sale via Varvara Roza Galleries.

About Tom de Freston and Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Tom de Freston (b. 1983) is an artist, writer and illustrator based in Oxford. De Freston studied Fine Art and the Leeds Metropolitan University (2002-2005), followed by an MA in the History of Art from Cambridge University (2005-2007). He has been the recipient of various prestigious Fellowship and Residencies, including a Leverhulme Funded Residency at Cambridge University, the Levy Plumb Award (Christ’s College) and the inaugural Creative Fellowship at Birmingham University. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including the Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge University (2026, 2010), Varvara Roza Galleries, London (2025), Old Fire Station, Oxford (2018), Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2017), Battersea Arts Centre, London (2016), Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2012), Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Tokyo (2012). De Freston’s work is part of private and public collections including Christ's College, Cambridge University, Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum. Essays on his work have been written by, amongst others, Sir Nicolas Serota, Sir Trevor Nunn, Richard Cork and Professor Lydia Goehr.  Tom de Freston is represented by Varvara Roza Galleries.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave (b.1990) is the Sunday Times bestselling novelist of more than a dozen novels for children and adults, including British Book Award’s Children’s Book of the Year The Girl of Ink & Stars, Betty Trask-awarded The Mercies, The Geomancer Trilogy, and Almost Life. With her husband, she created Julia and the Shark, winner of the Waterstones Gift of the Year, and Leila and the Blue Fox, winner of the Wainwright Prize. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages and optioned for stage and screen.
 

No booking required.