We are thrilled to have esteemed visual artist Susan Aldworth to join us online to discuss her work and how successful interdisciplinary collaborations are sustained. Susan Aldworth’s art in print has explored the chemistry of the brain and the sense of self. Using various techniques, she has been adept in finding ways and means to give substance to the intangible and the immaterial, creating visual equivalents derived from the materials and processes of printmaking itself. More recently she has partnered with a scientist to explore alchemy, a magical mythical process of transformation aptly mirrored by etching, with its unpredictable mix of inks and acids, metals and resists.
Her subjects range from consciousness, where we see the brain at work with the neural pathways pulsing and sparking, to the brain in turmoil, disrupted by epileptic seizures which strike ‘out of the blue’. The mind suspended in sleep, yet active with dream and nightmare, is the subject of the series The Dark Self. In the sombre sequence of monoprints, A Puff of Smoke, grief is pictured as a nebulous knot of pain overwhelming the mind. Harnessing process to imagination, Susan Aldworth’s evocative prints help us to understand the emotions and sensations that define mind and self.
About the Event
July 27th, 2026 18:00 BST, 19:00 CEST. This event will be hosted via Zoom.
Agenda:
- 19:00 Welcome and introduction to EDGE
- 19:10 Talk from Susan Aldworth
- 19:30 Q&A
- 19:40 Networking via breakout rooms
- 20:00 End of session
About Susan Aldworth
Susan Aldworth (born 1955) is a visual artist who lives and works in London. Susan studied philosophy at Nottingham University before studying print at Sir John Cass, London. She has since won great acclaim for her work as an experimental printmaker and installation artist, focusing on the exploration of human identity with reference to narratives from lived experience, medicine, neuroscience and philosophy. Through her investigations into consciousness, sleep, childhood, dementia, schizophrenia, epilepsy and migration, Susan has developed a particular interest in expanding notions of contemporary portraiture.
Working in a variety of print media including monoprint, etching, lithography and cyanotype, Susan mixes images from medical scans and photography with direct marks from the human body and her own drawn marks to create textured and complex works which question who we are. Her trademark white lines reflect her interest in x-rays and inner states, and together with chemical reactions on the plate, give her work a feeling of capturing a single moment in life.
Her investigations into human identity have linked Susan with the Art & Science movement in the UK since the late 1990s, and she taught for many years on the MA Art & Science at Central Saint Martins, London. Her experimental work in print includes the groundbreaking etchings – Transience – printed directly from human brain tissue. Alongside her established reputation as a radical printmaker Susan makes large- scale installations including The Portrait Anatomised, National Portrait Gallery, London, 2013, The Dark Self, York St Mary’s, 2017, Illuminating the Self , Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, 2020 and Belongings at The Arcade, King’s College, London in 2024 and Edinburgh Printmakers in 2026
Her work is held in many public and private collections including the V&A, British Museum, British Library, Fitzwilliam Museum, Wellcome Collection Library, Newcastle University, University of York, St Thomas’s Hospital and the Sleep Centre at Guy’s Hospital. Susan has exhibited widely nationally and internationally at venues including the National Portrait Gallery, London, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, York St Mary’s York, Freelands Foundation, London, Science Museum, London, Edinburgh Printmaker’s, Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden. Williams College Museum of Art, USA, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York City, Moravian Gallery, Brno, and Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice She is a regular presenter on BBC radio.
More at susanaldworth.com
