In 'Pastoral Care' five artists investigate the relationship between nature and caregiving. They probe the connection between the outdoors and our inner psychological landscape and ask more broadly how the 'pastoral' can influence an artist's methodology.
The paintings of Lily Hargreaves mine events from the early twentieth century, focusing on the way in which Europeans interacted with nature between the wars. Using different bizarre and unsettling stories from this era Hargreaves reflects upon the desire for escapism that came in the wake of WWI but also the impulse to control and dominate. In her own words ‘by focusing on ways in which a world that wants to grow wild and free may be constricted, the series critiques an innate entitlement seemingly ingrained within white Europeans in this era, and how that rubs up against the contemporary fall of empire.’
Jennifer Pitchers uses dream interpretation and automatic drawing to approach emotions and personal truths tangentially. Self-knowledge, often elusive when approached head on, is here obsessively interrogated through ethereal and sometimes earthy imagined vignettes.