Becoming Rock offers a deeply personal perspective on our 2025 theme of Land, exploring the artist’s landscape-based responses to two recent major life events: a radical hysterectomy resulting in surgical menopause and breast cancer which led to multiple surgeries.

Through photography, film, prints and experimental drawings, Louise documents her experiences within rocky landscapes chosen for their physical, psychological and metaphorical resonance, and encourages us to relate our own life experiences, whatever they may be, to the landscape.

Responding to her cancer diagnosis, the artist seeks out boulders where she films and photographs her body, making connections between the calcium rich limestone landscape and the ‘calcification’ occurring within her own tissue. Experiences of radical hysterectomy are sited in the dramatic slate-quarried landscapes of the Lake District, drawing parallels between the surgically quarried body and quarried land. A series of site-specific walks explore the effects of menopause using a process of walking and menopause map-drawing.