In 1926, Virginia Woolf published her essay ‘On Being Ill’. In it she asked why illness, something everyone experiences at some point in their lives, is so rarely written about. Part of the problem, Woolf argued, is language. We have plenty of words for love and grief. But try to describe a headache to a doctor and ‘language at once runs dry’.

A century later, this exhibition brings together modern and contemporary artists who find new ways to describe illness and disability through their lived experience. Some use sculpture, gesture and mark-making where words fall short. Others respond to key themes of Woolf’s essay; the view from a bed, the altered passing of time or structures of community and care.