Angelic Conversations presents a grid filled with frenzied lines against a blue background of wave-like forms, with three circular shapes running along the top. The line ‘Angelic conversations’ features in handwriting at the bottom. Although best-known as a filmmaker, Derek Jarman painted throughout his life. His painterly practice accompanied his work in film, and in 1985, Jarman released the movie The Angelic Conversation. This follows a young man’s journey into longing for another man, and combines stop-motion images with ethereal music, images of the land and sea and an unseen narrator (Judi Dench) reciting fourteen of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Associating a major British literary icon with an evocative expression of male desire, Jarman struck a provocative political note in 1980s Britain, during a period of homophobic repression and the fight for equal rights.