CAMBRIDGE.- Following its acclaimed presentation in London last winter, poíēsis, the solo exhibition by British artist Tom de Freston, will open at the Museum of Classical Archaeology, University of Cambridge from February to May 2026, under the direction of Professor Caroline Vout, Director of the Museum. The exhibition is curated by Dr Susanne Turner and marks a significant new chapter in the life of a body of work that has been widely praised for its emotional candour, painterly ambition and mythic resonance.

At Varvara Roza Galleries, poíēsis was described by critics as one of de Freston’s most powerful exhibitions to date, and its arrival in Cambridge situates the work in dialogue with the museum’s renowned collection of classical casts, deepening its engagement with antiquity, archetype and the afterlives of myth.


The second losing, 2025, mixed media on canvas, 110 x70 cm.

The title poíēsis derives from the ancient Greek ποιεῖν — ‘to make’, ‘to create’ — referring to the act of bringing something into being that did not previously exist. For de Freston, this concept operates simultaneously as artistic method and lived experience: an intuitive, imaginative force that binds grief, love and transformation.

For over sixteen years, de Freston has painted his wife, the award-winning novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave, in shifting literary and mythological roles — Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, Eurydice. These portraits form part of the couple’s long-standing multimedia collaborations across books, films, graphic novels and performance.

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. The paintings 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.


And I must find a means to separate from it, mixed media on canvas, 2024, 163 x 100 cm

Interviewed for a recent Guardian profile, de Freston reflected on painting his wife “pregnant and nude, not as an object of beauty but as a site of transformation and vulnerability”, articulating the ethical and emotional stakes that underpin the series. These works do not aestheticise grief; they metabolise it, fusing biography with myth in a language that is raw, tender and fiercely contemporary.

Throughout the exhibition, figures are staged within shifting architectures — grids, interiors, landscapes — where shadows, footprints and reaching hands interrupt the pictorial space. These are psychological hinterlands, places of hovering presence and near-disappearance, inviting viewers into intimate zones that are always just beyond reach.


Tom de Freston

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.

The Cambridge exhibition coincides with the publication of de Freston’s second monograph with Anomie Press, featuring new essays by Professor Caroline Vout, Director of the Museum of Classical Archaeology, critic Matthew Holman, and a conversation between de Freston and Millwood Hargrave. A new short film directed by Mark Jones (Unmarked Film), de Freston’s long- time collaborator, will be released alongside the exhibition.



Waiting for an arrival, 2024, mixed media on canvas, 200 x 150 cm.

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.



Splitfish, Mixed media on paper, 2024, 40 x 30 cm.

Museum of Classical Archaeology, University of Cambridge

The Museum of Classical Archaeology is home to one of the finest surviving collections of plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture in the world, housed in its atmospheric Cast Gallery. Exhibitions are displayed amongst the casts, creating new dialogues between ancient and modern, antiquity and its reception. Founded in 1884 and embedded within the Faculty of Classics, the Museum supports teaching, research and public engagement, presenting over 450 casts alongside a significant collection of original artefacts, ceramic sherds and epigraphic squeezes. Admission is free, and the Museum serves as both a vital academic resource and an accessible cultural destination, revealing the enduring relevance of classical antiquity to contemporary audiences. MoCA is one of eight museums and collections which work together as the University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) and received funding from Arts Council England as a National Portfolio Organisation.