Second Person: Becky Brewis
17 to 26 April 2026
Opening event: Thursday, 16 April, 6 to 8pm
Second Person Poems: Thursday 23 April, 7 to 8pm
Informal Family Session, Friday 24 April, 1 to 4pm
No booking required for the above events. All welcome
Second Person stages the issue of how a parent chooses to frame and document their child. It does so against a backdrop of children’s emergent relationships with the reproduction of their images online. These intimate drawing-photo hybrids explore boundaries, storytelling and a tussle of wills.
This work is the product of the artist’s ongoing attempt to collaborate with her daughter, who turns two during the exhibition. The project will continue for as long as her daughter is willing, adapting to allow for more agency and co-creation.
The images are loosely based on scenes from family life. The artist makes large drawings using imagery from her own childhood photos and then photographs her daughter interacting with them. The resulting montages are in-person fabrications rather than digitally edited collages. They explore a mother-daughter-camera relationship and how the families we make are haunted by the ones we come from.
Artist biography
Becky Brewis is an Edinburgh-based visual artist whose work explores memory and material culture. She has shown work at The Bomb Factory (London), Radiophrenia (Glasgow), Summerhall (Edinburgh), Christie’s (London), Visions in the Nunnery (London), London Festival of Architecture, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and Mall Galleries (London). In 2023 she presented solo exhibitions at Leith School of Art and at Verdant Works Museum, Dundee.
Becky completed an MFA in Contemporary Art Practice at ECA in 2021, winning the Degree Show Purchase Prize and the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation Bursary. She previously studied on the Royal Drawing School’s funded postgraduate programme (The Drawing Year, 2015-16). She was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2017) and in 2018-19 was artist in residence at the Centre for Philosophy and Visual Art at King’s College London.
Events
Second Person: Poems, Thursday 23 April, 7-8pm
Helena Fornells Nadal reads from her series of poems written in response to the artworks. Plus readings by Edinburgh-based poets Tessa Berring and Honor Hamlet.
Helena Fornells Nadal is a Catalan poet based in Edinburgh. She is currently engaged in research on the intersection between Scottish land politics and ecopoetics. Her first solo publication, I Could Not Ask You To, was released by Mouse Press in 2025.
Informal Family Session, Friday 24 April, 1-4pm
Drop-in drawing for families. Experiment with texture, make a wearable drawing or have your portrait taken as an artwork. Join Becky for informal drawing activities for children of all ages and their caregivers.