Memories Weigh Heavy

Memories Weigh Heavy presents a new body of drawings made during and in response to a year of personal upheaval and change. Giles uses the temporary, borrowed rooms she found herself in to invent layered spaces (or narratives?) that suggest shifts in time, memory and emotional state. Moving in and out between direct observation and reflection, Giles allows images to build gradually, holding intimacy, uncertainty and resilience within the same frame. This ongoing negotiation between control and uncertainty becomes a quiet duel between hand and mind, seeking fragile resolution through the act of drawing itself.

Memories Weigh Heavy has been produced by the Broadway Gallery through its Letchworth Open Bursaries 2025 programme.

Biography

Talia Giles is a visual artist and creative producer based in Bedford, UK whose practice is rooted in drawing. Reflecting on her lived experience, drawing has becoming both an architectural and emotional framework – a space holding together creativity and memory, revealing the toil of everday life.

Her work has been shown widely in solo and group exhibitions across the UK. Recent exhibitions include Drawing Closer at the Royal Drawing School, London (2026) and the Cass Art Prize at Copeland Gallery, Peckham (2025). Notable solo shows include Bedford Gallery & Art Centre (2021) and The Pavilion, Bedford Park (2018), alongside multiple open studios and exhitbions at POP STUDIO4, Bedford (2023–2026) including The Big Fat Salon Hang (2024), Everyday People (2024), and group exhibitions at Firstsite, Colchester (2023), and The Quarry Theatre, Bedford (2023).

Giles’s practice is driven by a commitment to drawing and experimenting with narrative development. Outside the studio, Giles’s focus in on community engagement and collaboration through her social enterprise, Pride Of Place Bedford (POP), which supports artist-led projects in vacant urban spaces.