Bigger Pleasures

“My current body of work is born out of an interest in our relationship to myths and nature as well as symbolism within occult practices. As a symbol which recurs throughout religion and mythology, the leopard has become an emotional motif through which to touch upon our conflicted relationship with the environment and explore an element of escapism through the creation of dream-like spaces.” - Harriet Gillett, 2021

Harriet Gillett is an artist from East Yorkshire, currently based in London. Seeing painting as a space where multiple narratives can exist at once, her works playfully circulate around contradictions within themes of identity, surveillance and our relationship with myths and nature. Working from a combination of observational drawing and imagination and referencing a range of literary sources, she creates psychological landscapes which look to blur the lines between the tradition and the contemporary, abstraction and figuration, dream and reality. She employs a variety of materials and processes, often mixing together seemingly opposing subjects, colours and painting languages within one image to reflect our contradictory relationship to our environments. The merging of vibrant watercolours or layering of murky oil over neon spray-paint enacts memory’s ability to distort things and our desire to sugar-coat the past, whilst offering an escapist glimpse of nostalgia towards shared rituals and spaces.

Having graduated from City and Guilds of London Art School in 2020, she has exhibited across London and was recently shortlisted for the Ingram prize.

@harrietgillettart 
www.harrietgillett.myportfolio.com