In Conversation With Gill Gregory

Sunday 31 May | 2:00–4:00pm

Dr Gill Gregory is the author of poetry, biography, award-winning life writing, and a memoir told through the paintings that have shaped her life. From an early age she possessed a strong visual imagination and was greatly influenced by her “Uncle Laurie,” an art therapist who worked with shell-shocked soldiers during and after the Second World War.

Gill’s grandfather, Alexis, became a doctor and art collector after escaping Tashkent during the Russian Revolution of 1905. She grew up with her late, much-missed brother Andrew, who suffered from severe epilepsy. As a child, she imagined his seizures as “explosions” in his mind.

Cornelia Parker’s installation Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) became a key motif in Gill’s artistic journey, alongside works by Paul Cézanne, Odilon Redon, Rachel Whiteread, and others.

For six years, Gill lived in a studio “for poor scholars” next door to a…