Emotional Outbursts: love, loss and a semi-autobiographical practice with Leah Hickey

Part of Mental Health for Artists 2026

Join artist and writer Leah Hickey as she weaves romantic love and familial loss through a semi-autobiographical, interdisciplinary practice. Bringing together experimental prose, free verse poetry, Early Modern English, typographic painting, stone engraving, and Victorian Valentines’ cards, Hickey unpacks the complexities of grief and its lingering hauntings within an intuitive, emotionally led practice.

About Leah

Leah Hickey is an artist and writer informed by heartache, a term used to mediate between grief, love, limerence and loneliness. Her work is emotionally led and influenced by women on screen, Romantic thought and Christian morality. She is recipient of the Sir Whitworth Wallis Fellowship 2025–26 at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMaG), where she is researching the material processes and histories of Victorian-era Valentines’ cards, and she also recently received a DYCP to develop the publishing imprint, Tentative Press.

About Mental Health for Artists

Mental Health for Artists is Axis’ annual event season dedicated to the wellbeing and self-care of artists and creatives.

This year’s programme looks closely at how artists sustain themselves and their practices. Through conversations about tenderness, grief, regeneration, seasonality, and world-making, the season offers space to reflect on how we live, work, and care within contemporary art.

• See full programme