Talk | In Conversation: Pop and the Figure with Tanya Bentley and Miriam O’Connor Perks
6–7pm
£18 (£16.20 For Friends and other concessions)
[ Talk )
Buy Tickets >In celebration of our Pop and the Figure exhibition, join curator Tanya Bentley from the National Portrait Gallery and Pallant House Gallery’s curator Miriam O’Connor Perks in conversation as they explore the Gallery’s internationally significant collection of British Pop Art.
Focusing on artists featured in the exhibition, including Peter Blake, Pauline Boty, Richard Hamilton and Jann Haworth, Tanya and Miriam will discuss the return to figuration in the 1950s and 1960s, and how popular culture, mass media and advertising transformed representations of the body.
Pop and the Figure demonstrates how British Pop artists have utilised the body to epitomise the spirit of an era, through themes of celebrity, social liberation, the threat of nuclear war and seductive imagery of advertising. This ‘In Conversation’ will cover how works in the exhibition reflect the cultural shifts, aspirations and anxieties of a rapidly changing society.
This talk is part of our March Late event. By purchasing this talk ticket, you gain free access to our galleries, exhibitions and drop-in activities from 5–8.30pm.
Miriam O’Connor Perks
Miriam O’Connor Perks is Curator at Pallant House Gallery. She completed her Master’s in Art History and Museum Curating at the University of Sussex in 2018. She worked at Towner Eastbourne before joining Pallant House Gallery in 2021. She leads on artists’ commissions at the Gallery and has a particular interest in post-war and contemporary British art.
Tanya Bentley
Tanya Bentley is Curator of Contemporary Collections at the National Portrait Gallery, where her research focuses on 20th-century and contemporary British portraiture. Curator of the current Peter Blake: Pop Art Life (11 February-23 May 2027), she has worked on numerous exhibitions since joining the Gallery in 2014, including Cézanne Portraits (2017-18), David Hockney: Drawing from Life (2020 and 2023), and Lines of Feeling: Portrait Drawing Now (2025). She was lead curator of Icons & Identities (2021-22) and project curator of the Lucian Freud Archive displays at the National Portrait Gallery.
