Strange bodies

In 2020, artist Tom de Freston and his novelist wife Kiran Millwood Hargrave discovered they were expecting twins. But Kiran miscarried, and thus began a long journey to parenthood that saw the loss of six more pregnancies. De Freston began exploring his experience of the losses in his artwork. His search for understanding leads him to artists and artworks from Titian and Francis Bacon to Braca Ettinger and Gerhard Richter. And as the miscarriages mounted and de Freston became ever more aware of the precarious bodily experience that is pregnancy, he excavates the erotic charge of the male gaze, its yearning for connection, and the desires and boundaries that exist between lovers, and between painter and painting. Addressed directly to De Freston's wife Kiran, 'Strange Bodies' is an intimate, authentic, and powerfully moving account of a loving relationship that pulses with wonder and insight.