Artists Disrupt Pastoral Genre Through Hyper-Pastoral Films Amid Conservative Turn
A fresh artistic movement known as 'hyper-pastoral' is taking shape as modern creators question the traditional pastoral genre's role in upholding social hierarchies. In 2024, Andrea Arnold's film Bird, set in Gravesend, Kent, explores the connection between rural life and the British working class through its main character, Bailey. Maeve Brennan's short film With Horses, part of the SOIL exhibition at Somerset House in 2023, portrays horses surrounded by plastic debris in Burkina Faso. Theo Panagopoulos's 2024 film essay The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing utilizes archival missionary footage from Palestine from the 1930s-40s. Alicia Rogalska's 2024 trilogy Propagate, featured at the Biennale Matter of Art Prague, examines gender and land through female flower farming in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, reflecting a pandemic-induced interest in homemaking and the fact that 88% of English farms were male-owned in 2023.
Key facts
- The hyper-pastoral is an artistic movement disrupting traditional pastoral genre conventions
- Andrea Arnold's film Bird (2024) is set in Gravesend, Kent and explores working-class rurality
- Maeve Brennan's With Horses (2023) shows at Somerset House's SOIL exhibition in London
- Theo Panagopoulos's The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (2024) reappropriates colonial footage of Palestine
- Alicia Rogalska's Propagate (2024) trilogy was shown at Biennale Matter of Art Prague
- 88% of English farms were owned by men in 2023
- The pastoral genre has roots in ancient Greek and Roman literature through Hesiod and Virgil
- SOIL: The World at Our Feet is a group exhibition examining earth's parasitic qualities
Entities
Artists
- Rose Higham-Stainton
- Andrea Arnold
- Nykiya Adams
- Maeve Brennan
- Theo Panagopoulos
- Alicia Rogalska
- Hesiod
- Virgil
- Edward Spenser
- John Milton
- Thomas Gainsborough
- J.M.W. Turner
- John Constable
- Monty Don
- Alan Titchmarsh
- Ramona Jones
Institutions
- Somerset House
- National Library of Scotland
- Moving Image Archive
- Biennale Matter of Art Prague
- Platforma Výkvět
- JOAN
- ArtReview
Locations
- England
- London
- Norfolk
- Gravesend
- Kent
- Dartford
- Burkina Faso
- Palestine
- Glasgow
- Scotland
- Czech Republic
- Slovakia
- Prague
- Greece
- Rome