Emer Gillespie is an Irish artist currently living in the UK. Graduating with an MA in Photography from the London College in Communication in 2009, her work is personal in nature, examining issues around motherhood, alternative family structures and the role that the subject and photographer play in creative collaborations. Gillespie’s First Mothers, is a personal and emotional look at forced adoption in Ireland. It is inspired by her own experience as a single parent and her mother’s and aunt’s experience of coerced adoptions in Catholic controlled Ireland.

Exhibitions include: Love will tear us apart, Centre Photographic (Clermont-Ferrand, France), How One Thing Leads to Another, Critical Mass, Houston Centre for Photography, She loves me, she loves me not, Encontros da Imagem (Portugal), Family Narratives, RUA RED (Dublin), FFWE, Photographers Gallery (London), Altered States, Foley Gallery (New York), Shifting Perspectives, OXO tower, Southbank (London) and The Space Between at the V&A Museum of Childhood (London).

First Mothers was awarded a Solas Ireland award and was exhibited at the Gallery of Photography Ireland which subsequently toured internationally.