About

I paint snapshots of a history that hasn’t quite happened. I often look to the past, patchworking together historical stories to build new ones that feel contemporarily relevant. I’m typically attracted to events that are bizarre, seemingly unexplainable, and apparently unique and attempt to find ways in which to weave them into broader contextual tapestries. The fictionality of the painted world allows for speculation and indecision when reflecting on such happenings. The limitations of reality are lifted, and I am omnipotently able to mix worlds from Prehistory with those of the Industrial Age, or the Medieval with the Now. The ambiguity provided in painting gives opportunity for nuance; elements of my research material are often difficult to understand from a 21st-century perspective, so I hope my paintings might bring life to these distant pasts and invite reconsiderations without the need to find conclusion.

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My world is highly stylised, referencing an extreme rigidity and precise detail popular with interwar British painters. The style appears a response to the chaotically changing times in which they lived; an escapist vehicle through which they might systematise and control the world around them. It seems appropriate to revisit this style now, in the 2020s, a decade that has so often been noted for the way in which it mirrors its a hundred year old counterpart.

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My current body of work delves into the early 20th-century wellness industry, looking at the treatment centres and fad diets that became fashionable amongst the upper classes in this era. I’m exploring how this period possibly relates to a Catholic tradition of fasting, tracing it through medieval saints and Victorian teenagers up to trends we see in 21st century food discussions.

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Hargreaves (b. 2000) is a painter based in London. She graduated from Goldsmiths with a BA in Fine Art in 2022 and from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Painting in 2024, the latter selecting her work as its annual painting acquisition. She has also previously been awarded the Tooth Travelling Scholarship and the BAGT Open Founder’s Prize, been a finalist for the ACS Studio Prize and Valerie Beston Prize, and been shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize.