Essential Information

Type Talks and tours
Location
Date and Times Wednesday 22 October 2025 | 1pm-1.30pm
Prices Free

This talk by Dr Freya Gowrley will explore the role of collage in Jacqueline Bishop’s work, exploring how the technique allows Bishop to visualise the invisible. 

Focusing on Bishop’s remixing and reformulation of juxtaposed visual imagery, it identifies collage as a key mechanism for the kind of storytelling that is at the heart of both Bishop’s practice, and the creation of colonial and postcolonial knowledge more broadly.

This talk will take place in the King's Closet, located on the first floor of the Queen's House.

A painting of a market scene in the Caribbean in the 18th Century
Agostino Brunias (1728 - 1796), A Linen Market with a Linen-stall and Vegetable Seller in the West Indies. Image credit: Yale Center for British Art.

About the speaker

Dr Freya Gowrley is an academic and writer who works on the cultural lives of images and objects. She is based at the University of Bristol, where she writes about the relationship between art and identity from the early modern period to the present day. 

She is the author of Domestic Space in Britain, 1750–1840: Materiality, Sociability and Emotion (2022), and Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage (2024).

Salons in the Queen's House

Image
A teapot adorned with images of women and plants

This event is part of a salon series responding to the themes of Jacqueline Bishop's groundbreaking and powerful ceramic work The Keeper of All The Secrets.

This tea set was acquired by Royal Museums Greenwich in 2024 and is on display in the Queen's House.

The term 'salon' was used historically to describe social gatherings in the domestic sphere. Participation was open to a range of individuals, and women often acted as hosts. Salons were alternative spaces for learning, debate, and the exchange of ideas. We continue to explore this tradition at the Queen's House.

Speakers at our Salons include artists, researchers, curators and creative practitioners. Their talks bring to light new insights and share different perspectives. 

What’s On

A branch of the bread fruit tree with fruit
Talks and tours | Salons in the Queen's House

Salons in the Queen's House: Breadfruit and the Creolising of Caribbean Foodways

In this free lunchtime talk historian Jade Lindo will explore the historical and cultural significance of breadfruit in the Caribbean
Wednesday 15 October 2025 | 1pm-1.30pm
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Queen's House
A painting of a market scene in the Caribbean in the 18th Century
Talks and tours | Salons in the Queen's House

Salons in the Queen's House: Visualising the Invisible in Jacqueline Bishop’s Collage Histories

In this free lunchtime talk art historian Dr. Freya Gowrley will explore the artistic potential of collage for telling colonial histories
Wednesday 22 October 2025 | 1pm-1.30pm
Free
Queen's House
An image showing a market woman holding and selling a pineapple. She is next to a basket full of other fruits.
Talks and tours | Salons in the Queen's House

Salons in the Queen's House: The Seeds of Survival

In this free lunchtime talk historian Akosua Paries-Osei will explore the empire-disrupting botanical knowledge of enslaved women
Wednesday 29 October 2025 | 1pm-1.30pm
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Queen's House

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