Strange Bodies: A Story of Loss and Desire

Strange Bodies is a book that explores the artist Tom de Freston's experience of the losses of six pregnancies, searching for a way to make sense of his grief and of his wife's. It finds representations of his feelings towards Kiran in Ovid's myth of Orpheus, and 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.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 02 May 2024
Publisher: Granta Books

Tom de Freston and Kiran Millwood Hargrave, expecting twins in 2020, faced a long journey to parenthood that saw the loss of six more pregnancies. De Freston explored his experience of the losses in his artwork, searching for a way to make sense of his grief and his wife's. He found representations of his feelings towards Kiran in Ovid's myth of Orpheus, who, in turning back to gaze upon Eurydice, loses her to the Underworld. His search for understanding leads him to artists and artworks from Titian and Francis Bacon to Braca Ettinger and Gerhard Richter. 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.

Weight: 368g
Dimension: 224 x 143 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781783789894