Till and Toil presents a new body of paintings by Karla Marchesi that uses the garden as both subject and metaphor for navigating uncertainty, pressure and change. The exhibition reflects on sustaining hope through periods of personal and collective turbulence.
Drawing together botanical forms, produce and the human figure, Marchesi explores resilience, adaptation and growth under constraint. Tangled vegetation, misshapen vegetables and precarious arrangements become visual expressions of persistence, informed by autobiography, art history and close observation.
Several works respond directly to Lucian Freud’s Interior with Plant, Reflection Listening (Self-Portrait) (1967–68), reimagining listening as an act of reflection and endurance. Elsewhere, vegetables inspired by eighteenth-century market still lifes appear bent, constrained and transformed, while domestic houseplants become quiet witnesses to emotional and psychological states.
Moving between the garden and the interior, Till and Toil embraces the slower rhythms of cultivation, inviting viewers to consider patience, resilience and the possibility that meaningful growth often begins beneath the surface, long before it becomes visible.
Opening Drinks
4 Jul
2pm – 4pm
Image: Undercover, 2026, Oil on linen.
