Emma Talbot is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary British art, creating immersive worlds that combine drawing, painting, sculpture, animation and text. Through a deeply personal visual language, her work explores the emotional and psychological dimensions of contemporary life, addressing themes including gender, ageing, environmental collapse, power and the possibility of transformation. Blending autobiography with mythology, philosophy and social commentary, Talbot creates narratives that are both intimate and universal.

Working primarily through hand-drawn imagery and her own writing, Talbot constructs vivid landscapes inhabited by recurring female protagonists who navigate moments of uncertainty, vulnerability and change. Her practice is characterised by a belief in imagination as a tool for survival and renewal, proposing alternative ways of living, caring and relating to one another in an increasingly complex world.

In 2021, Talbot collaborated with CIRCA on Four Visions for a Hopeful Future, a month-long public commission presented on Piccadilly Lights. Coinciding with International Women’s Day, the project transformed Europe’s largest advertising screen into a space for reflection on healing, collective responsibility and societal renewal in the aftermath of the pandemic. Across four animated chapters, Talbot invited audiences to imagine new futures shaped not by endless growth and consumption, but by empathy, sustainability and care. Released alongside the commission, Voices That Call Out extended these ideas into print, offering collectors a fragment of her hopeful vision for a world in transition.

Talbot was awarded the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2020, leading to major solo exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery, London, and Collezione Maramotti, Italy. Her work has also been presented at institutions including Tate St Ives, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Jupiter Artland and Kunstmuseum Bonn. Through a practice that combines visual beauty with urgent social questions, Talbot continues to imagine new possibilities for how we might live together and shape the future.