Friday 15th November 2024 – Sunday 23rd February 2025

No Notion of Loving by Halves is an exhibition by Jocelyn McGregor, commissioned by ‘a space’ arts. It is a site-specific, multi-media installation and programme of live performances that take a deep dive into Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and the enduring legacy of the ‘Female Gothic’. 

The title of the exhibition comes from a line in Northanger Abbey, where one of the lead female characters, Isabella proclaims “I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature. My attachments are always excessively strong.” For Jocelyn, this declaration epitomises the female relationships in the novel, which lurch from familial and supportive to conspiratorial; formal and funny to distant and heated; and can be ragingly competitive, passionate in both love and hate. They are complex, nuanced and fundamentally Gothic. 

These relationships often lurch from familial and supportive to conspiratorial; from formal and funny to distant and heated; and can be ragingly competitive, passionate in both love and hate. They are complex, nuanced and fundamentally Gothic.

This exhibition is part of the Jane Austen at GHT programme, which also includes an exhibition of Jane Austen’s travelling writing desk, In Training for a Heroine. You can read more about it here.

Critical Writing Commission by Anna Bogutskaya:

Read the special Critical Writing Commission by writer, producer and podcaster Anna Bogutskaya titled ‘Let Them Read Gothic Novels’ here.

About the artist:

Jocelyn McGregor is a multi-disciplinary artist based in North West England. She holds a BFA in Fine Art from the Ruskin School of Fine Art and an MFA in Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art. Awards include a Henry Moore Foundation Grant (2023), Sculpture in the City: Aldgate Square Commission 2022-23, the British Council SWAP UK/Ukraine Residency 2019-20 and Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2018 (touring South London Gallery & Liverpool Biennale). Exhibitions include ‘DREDGED’ (solo) in partnership with Lakeland Arts and Arts&Heritage, Windermere Jetty Museum, Cumbria (2023-24); ‘Lapsus Calami’ curated by Eddie Peake, Marlborough London (2023-24); ‘Mantle’ (solo), Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, UK (2022); ‘Trespassers Will be Detected?’, Dnipro Centre for Contemporary Culture, Ukraine (2020); and ‘A Fieldguide to Getting Lost’, T.A.F, Athens, Greece, 2018. Find out more about the artist here.

This exhibition is free to attend.