About

Breakfast tour with Katy Hessel Curator, Writer and Art Historian. I visited Nell Brookfield’s studio on a Sunday morning in October. The sun glistened through the windows onto a myriad of paintings. Paintings which, at first, dazzle in colour, invite us in with their sugar-coated subject matter, illuminate through their intricate textures – capturing the essence of silk, smoke, snakeskin, icing, fur, pomegranates, perfectly rendered hair. But hang around them longer and you are struck by something disconcerting. The crop of the scenes is too tight, the protagonists’ faces are concealed or turned away from us, ants coat the once delectable and edible food, a looming red hand dominates scenes – strangling spaghetti or chopping off hair. An unsettledness that transports me from the temple of the studio immediately back to reality. Katy is best known for running The Great Women Artists, her Instagram account that celebrates female artists on a daily basis. She also hosts The Great Women Artists Podcast, where she has interviewed the likes of Olivia Laing and Ali Smith, and Turner Prize-winning artist, Lubaina Himid. British Vogue listed the podcast as their Top Podcasts of 2021. In October 2020, she made her TV debut writing and presenting Inside Museums on Artemisia Gentileschi (BBC Four). In 2021, she appeared on Inside Culture with Mary Beard (BBC Two), and later this year will present Art On The BBC.Katy regularly writes on the subject of women artists, including an interview with Zadie Smith, and has spoken at the Oxford Union, Intelligence Squared, The National Gallery, The Courtauld, Cambridge University, presented films for BBC, Dior, Tate, Barbican, Royal Academy of Arts, National Portrait Gallery; appeared on BBC Radio 3 & 4; and has been featured by The Sunday Times, ES Magazine, i-D, among others. She has curated exhibitions at Victoria Miro, Timothy Taylor, an area of Tate Modern for a Tate Late. In 2021, Katy was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Art & Culture. She is also the host of Dior's podcast Dior Talks, where she has hosted conversations with Tracey Emin, Judy Chicago to the Creative Director of Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri.