"Like half-remembered dreams, her curious pastoral visions displace familiarity in search of wilder fantasies, where humans are nowhere to be found. Against Nature, the London-based artist's second solo show at Pilar Corrias, establishes Wilson at the helm of a flourishing artistic engagement with the para-pastoral in contemporary painting. Hers is an altogether strange, uncanny variant of the British countryside that resists the canonical entrapments of a bucolic idyll."
"In her latest body of work, Wilson accesses the myths and histories of the British countryside through uncultivated poisonous plants - henbane, thorn-apple, cuckoo pint - species that grow across the UK at its margins, inhabiting wastelands and roadsides, and bearing long, oft-forgotten histories in folklore and medicine. "The presence of nature has become more central in my life and practice over the past couple of years," she says. "Compared to previous paintings, the plants in this exhibition have far more detail."
Paintings present uncanny pastoral visions that displace familiar idylls in favor of wilder fantasies where humans are absent. Works focus on uncultivated poisonous plants—henbane, thorn-apple, cuckoo pint—that grow on UK margins, inhabiting wastelands and roadsides and carrying forgotten histories in folklore and medicine. Detailed botanical observation and field engagement with landscapes, including Neolithic sites such as Avebury and Orkney, inform compositions set against crepuscular skies. Plants are rendered with increased specificity and treated as ancient, sentient entities, positioned as protagonists that reshape contemporary para-pastoral approaches to the British countryside.
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