'Painted Love' and the Launch of Him Hymn

Tamsyn will be joined by a wonderful panel of guest readers, including Nell Osborne, Tessa Berring and Jen Hadfield, whose collective work explores the profound intersections between literary and visual practices.

The evening will begin with an overview of the 18th-century masterpiece 'by Andrea Casali from The Hunterian collection, and part of the permanent display in the Hunterian Art Gallery. This painting served as inspiration for Challenger’s ekphrastic poem ‘Rain of Gold’.

This event has been organised and generously supported by Colin Herd and the University of Glasgow Creative Writing programme.

Tessa Berring studied Sculpture and drawing at Edinburgh College of Art. After graduating her practice shifted slowly into writing, mostly through lack of space, though also through a developing interest in words as sculptural forms in themselves. She is the author of poetry collections Bitten Hair, Folded Purse, and Burnt Snow (Blue Diode Press), Joke Book (The Silent Academy) and Cut Glass and No Flowers (Dancing Girl Press).

More of her writing, a lot of it collaborative, can be found via Map Magazine, Intellect Books, Black Box Manifold, Ambient Receiver, Gutter and 3:am Magazine. Her work often emerges from an attempt to capture ‘feeling’ through the distorting, sometimes shattered, lens of language.

Tamsyn Challenger is a multi-disciplinary artist. Her visual work has explored wide-ranging sociopolitical themes, including gender violence and precursor work on selfie culture and has featured in the Guardian Newspaper’s Top 5 Exhibitions list twice.

She’s produced documentary including My Male Muse, a BBC radio 4 Pick of the Year.

Her poetry has been published in Anthropocene, Osmosis Press, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The AI Literary Review, Skirting Around Magazine, Permeable Barrier and Pamenar Press. Filmpoems have been officially selected by StAnza Festival ‘25, the Millennium Film Workshop, NYC, and the Women in Word Literary festival ‘24.

Her first book of poems Him Hymn was published this autumn by Osmosis Press.

Jen Hadfield’s poetry, non-fiction and visual practices sprout from the wildness of the world, including humankind. In 2008, she was the youngest winner of the T.S.Eliot Poetry Prize. Storm Pegs – A Life Made in Shetland, her first non-fiction title, was published by Picador in 2024, along with her Selected Poems. She is a recipient of a Windham Campbell Prize for Literature and lives, with her family, in Shetland.

Nell Osborne is a poet, novelist and researcher of experimental writing. In 2024, she published a poetry pamphlet, Thank You For Everything, with Monitor Books, and co-edited Gestures: a body of work, a cross-disciplinary anthology on gesture and feminist practice, published with MUP. In 2025, she published her debut novel, Ghost Driver, with Moist Books.

This event will take place in the Hunterian Art Gallery, which is located on Hillhead Street beside the University of Glasgow Library.

AccessAble Guide for Hunterian Art Gallery and the Mackintosh House.

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Hunterian Art Gallery, 82 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, United Kingdom

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