About

I paint snapshots of a history that has never happened. Painting is to me, in its essence, a fiction, and the boundaries of my painted world are mine to construct. That omnipotence serves to remind of the fabricated nature of reality; seemingly fixed ideas like time, class, and place can be malleable. The first of these is of particular interest, my images a space to play with the way in which history is recorded and bring attention to the lens we are shown history through. I avoid typical linearity, instead weaving a web where threads of past, present, and future entangle. Iron Age mummies can rise from the dead to take afternoon tea with Edwardian aristocrats, the plague-ridden can rave alongside martyred saints, Victorian ladies can receive junk mail from the 21st century.

My images rarely exist as individuals. I work in long series that accumulate to reveal winding narratives. In this way, my practice takes the form of a literature; each composition a dense tableau wherein every element is imbued with symbolic importance. It is a viewer’s job to piece together clues from which to build a story and, in turn, meaning. Overall, I want to invite viewers to step out of their world and into one that parodies, probes, and pulls at the seams of the former's apparent truths.

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Hargreaves was born in Reading, 2000, and is now based in London. In 2019, she completed a Foundation Diploma in Fine Art from Central St. Martins before moving to Goldsmiths for undergraduate study in the same subject. She is currently studying for her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. In 2022, Hargreaves was awarded the Tooth Travelling Scholarship as well as the BAGT Open Founder's Prize, and has previously been shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize, the Hari Art Prize, Studio West's 'Now Introducing' Prize, and the Start Emerging Artists Prize.