Jemma Desai, ‘There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women’ (2026). Film still. Courtesy the artist.
Following the extended screening at 180 St Vincent Street, Jemma Desai will be joined by artist and graphic designer Rose Nordin to discuss their collaboration on ‘There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women’ and the publication ‘I DO NOT WANT WHAT I HAVEN’T GOT / I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED’.
Developed alongside the film, the publication was both part of the process of making the work and an element of the installation. Their collaboration brought Jemma’s practice of writing, gathering and arranging into dialogue with Rose’s work across art, graphic design and publishing. Together, they’ll reflect on how their working relationship evolved, how their distinct practices shaped the work, and how text and image move between the page, screen and exhibition space.
Copies of the publication will be available to purchase at the event.
About the artist /
Jemma Desai is a writer, convener and artist working across film, performance and visual arts. Through video, poetry, performance writing and collage, her practice explores forms of gathering, assemblage and circulation: of voices, bodies, images, ideas and ways of knowing across difference. Drawing on decolonial, black feminist and abolitionist thought, she is interested in artistic form as both an aesthetic and embodied social practice, and in the conditions through which culture is made, shared and received. These questions underpin her practice-based doctoral research, which explores abolitionist praxis as form and infrastructure in cultural production.
Rose Nordin is a British–Malay artist and book designer from London. She is currently participating artist in residence at Auto Italia, Fellow at the Centre for Art and Design Research and engaged in the British Council Connections Through Culture initiative with the Malaysian Design Archive.
Her practice engages with the publication or the book as an object of knowledge production, ritual technology and expanded material of exhibition. Previous commissioners and residency hosts include: Somerset House Studios (UK), Jan Van Eyke Academie (Netherlands) Documenta 15 (Germany), Art Night (UK), Serpentine Galleries (UK), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (USA) and Tai Kwan Contemporary (Hong Kong) . Rose was previously research associate at iniva (UK), Social Practice Fellow at the University of Chicago (USA) and associate lecturer at the University of Arts London.
Further Info
‘There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women’ was commissioned and developed in residence at Somerset House Studios.
Event Details
This event takes place at 180 St Vincent Street, 5–7pm.
Free, drop-in.
Refreshments available.
St Vincent Street Access
The space is fully accessible with lift access to the eighth floor.
180 St Vincent Street can be easily accessed by bus, train and subway.
It is a 26 minute walk from our home at 5 Florence Street and a 5 minute walk from Glasgow Central Station.
