Blue Shop Gallery presents
'BUCOLIA II'
11th June - 27th July 2025
PV Wednesday 11th June 6-9pm
72 Brixton Road, Oval SW9 6BH
Gallery opening hours: Wed - Sun | 11am - 6pm
JOSH RAZ
SAMMI LYNCH
JEMIMA MOORE
SAM DOUGLAS
ORLA KANE
SALVATORE FIORELLO
ELEANOR JOHNSON
YAGE GUO
MORWENNA MORRISON
LAURA L BELL
FRED COPPIN
JAMES FERGUSON-ROSE
FERGUS HARE
TOM SCOTCHER
Bucolia, a word derived from the original ‘bucolic’, describes a powerful longing for nature—a feeling of affinity with and belonging within the countryside. This exhibition celebrates work that revels in the tranquillity, delight, and mystery we experience in the presence of the natural world.
Alongside the human figure, nature has been one of the foremost sources of artistic inspiration throughout history. The idea of the bucolic stems from classical pastoral poetry, and its influence resurged during the Renaissance, where idealised landscapes reappeared in art. Early Renaissance works often relegated nature to a fantastical or symbolic backdrop, as in the heavenly panel of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. The rediscovery of linear perspective and a growing interest in natural history in the 15th century ushered in a more realist approach, exemplified by the art of Titian and Giorgione. Their synthesis of realism and classical symbolism produced some of the most celebrated works of the High Renaissance.
Centuries later, the Pre-Raphaelites became champions of the bucolic. In 1843, John Ruskin’s Modern Painters series advocated for nature as a moral and spiritual force, profoundly influencing the Brotherhood’s dedication to hyper-realistic detail. Their reverence for nature is epitomised in Millais’ Ophelia, perhaps the most iconic bucolic expression of the period.
In the 19th century, Manet looked back to Titian’s The Pastoral Concert while painting Déjeuner sur l’herbe, one of the most celebrated pastoral scenes of the Impressionist era. The invention of portable oil paint tubes freed artists to work en plein air, sparking new explorations of light and landscape. For Monet and his contemporaries, the challenge of capturing fleeting effects of light led to the innovative forms that came to define Impressionism.
By the 20th century, the Expressionists collapsed the boundary between artist and landscape. In the work of Munch or Münter, nature becomes warped by inner experience. This impulse paved the way for the gestural abstraction of artists like Cy Twombly, whose Quattro Stagioni series reimagines the bucolic, weaving together classical references and rural hues in a dialogue with the long history of pastoral painting.
Across Bucolia, artists respond to nature in varied and personal ways. Josh Raz’s Windblown Ice Skaters shows figures in joyful harmony with a frozen landscape, embodying immersion and escape. Yage Guo’s The Dream of Chrysanthemum centres on a single flower whose hypnotic beauty draws the viewer into quiet contemplation.
Other artists engage directly with the tradition of the bucolic. Morwenna Morrison’s work is set in lush bowers and forests reminiscent of Renaissance painting, but her subtle disruptions—ambiguous, modern intrusions—unsettle these idyllic scenes, as if the contemporary world is encroaching on timeless landscapes where we once found refuge.
Elsewhere, abstraction takes hold. Jemima Moore, for example, sees her practice not as an act of personal authorship but as a submission to a creative flow, akin to the deep underwater currents that inspire her work. Here, the bucolic is not depicted but embodied in process—freedom and idealism captured in movement and material.
For many of us, life in dense urban environments heightens our longing for nature. The works in Bucolia reflect both gratitude for fleeting encounters with the natural world and an acute awareness of its fragility. This exhibition returns us to one of art’s most enduring inspirations—and to one of humanity’s most essential sites of renewal.
‘Bucolia 1’ was a group show at Blue Shop Cottage in 2021, featuring Francesca Mollett, Mary Herbert, Plum Cloutman, Kate MccGwire, to name a few. This second iteration continues the conversation, deepening the gallery’s exploration of humanity’s timeless bond with nature.
hello@blueshopcottage.com for all sales enquiries
'The Dream of Chrysanthemum', Yage Guo, Oil on canvas, 110 x 140 cm, 2025
‘Casting Light on an Old World II’, Morwenna Morrison, 30cm x 30cm Oil on wood panel, 2025
‘Folly Moss’, James Ferguson-Rose, Oil on linen, 180 x 120cm, 2024
‘Cherry’, Fred Coppin, Oil on wood panel, 85 x 85 x 3.5 cm, 2025
EXHIBITING ARTIST INFORMATION |
Laura L Bell (b. 1987) was born on the North-East coast of England in Scarborough and lives and works in London, UK. Bell studied BA Art Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London (UK), graduating in 2010, and is currently studying at Turps Art School in London as part of the Off-site Programme (2023-25).
Fred Coppin (b. 1989) is based on the South Coast of England and works largely in oil paint, Coppin captures an evergreen sense of optimism in his work through a distinctive combination of amplified colour and playful forms. His paintings are ultimately tied together by an uplifting impulse to dissect, exaggerate and reassemble the world around us into its most hopeful state. This dreamlike quality is further heightened by a sense of flux between reality and the imagined through overlapping ideas, subjects, spaces and icons within the image. Whilst his painting is most often representational and nods to great British painters, the careful integration of glitches, geometry, and pastel tones offers a quality that firmly roots his work in the digital era.
Sam Douglas (b.1978) is a contemporary British painter born in Somerset. Douglas graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2007 and has exhibited internationally including Japan, China, Poland, Switzerland, Norway and Berlin, with solo exhibitions in Arles, London, Dublin and Edinburgh. During this time he has been selected for the John Moores painting prize and has been on numerous residencies. Sam Douglas is represented by Blue Shop Gallery.
Fergus Hare (b. 1977) earned his Foundation Diploma at Camberwell College of Arts and graduated from Norwich School of the Art in 1999. He has worked as an art handler and picture hanger in London and as an artist’s assistant and technician in Brighton. For many years, Fergus painted mainly landscape-based work, working mostly outdoors in oil paint. Somewhat inspired by Galileo’s drawings and his long-running passion for the moon and space, he also made charcoal drawings of the moon as seen from a telescope. These drawings were exhibited as an installation three times in London, Essex, and Munich, and they were featured in Astronomy Magazine and discussed in the book Moon: Art, Science and Culture by Alexandra Loske and Robert Massey. Fergus’s work was shown alongside Constable’s paintings in the Brighton Museum. His work is frequently mentioned in lectures on contemporary British Romanticism and the moon in art. From 2015 to 2023, Fergus was represented by New Art Projects in London, with whom he has exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 2022, New Art Projects published a book of Fergus’s work with a foreword by Fred Mann and an essay by Jenny Uglow. In that same year, his painting ‘Rose’ featured on the cover of the inaugural edition of ROSA (Review of Sussex Arts) magazine. In 2024, he illustrated Murder Is Easy by Agatha Christie for The Folio Society. Fergus currently lives and works in Brighton.
James Ferguson-Rose's (b. 1989) paintings are a conglomerate of past, present and future. Outside the studio, he walks and draws at the same time to record and collect information in the landscape as it appears and disappears over the course of a journey. Drawings and memory absorb the features and qualities of time spent in a place. Upon returning to the studio to make a painting that reflects on both journey and place there is a tension between the relationship of the work to its source material, where specific features of a landscape may have to be lost in the studio process but later recur purely in a sense of ‘painting,’ with the language of plane, line and mark speaking of an experience of place over the more Cartesian reality of a specific site.
Salvatore Fiorello (b.1976) is a painter based in Hackney, East London. He was born in Cardiff, Wales, to an Italian father and British mother. After spending his early childhood in the Canary Islands and the Caribbean, he returned to the UK in the mid 1980s. He completed his BA in Birmingham in 1998 and MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in 2000. Salvatore’s work explores peripheries within the landscape, reoccurring motifs such as fences, trees/foliage and windows act as both boundaries and portals, offering suggestions of what might be happening beyond the frame or behind what is visible.
Yage Guo 郭雅格 (b. 1998) is based in London and Shanghai. Guo's paintings encompass various techniques, including oil painting on wood panel and canvas, pencil drawing, and bookmaking. Drawing inspiration from literature, nature, mysticism, and imagery, Yage paints portraits, flowers, and still life with an ethereal style, with unique brushwork to evoke dreamlike fantasies or hazy memories. Time, nidana, and the use of metaphors are crucial concepts in her practice. She approaches these notions with a romantic and contemplative attitude. The presence of figures and objects no longer merely depicts their physical appearances; instead, it serves as a metaphorical exploration of the passage of time and the depth of emotions.
Eleanor Johnson (b.1994, UK) has a BA in Art History from UCL, London, and an MA in Fine art from City & Guilds of London Art School. In 2019, she participated in a two-month residency at the Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy. Johnson's work is in private collections and institutions in the UK, US, Europe, West Africa, Asia and South America. Eleanor Johnson currently lives and works in Oxfordshire, UK and is represented by Gillian Jason Gallery.
Orla Kane (b.1999) is a Scottish artist based in Glasgow. She graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 2021 before attending the Royal Drawing School's Intensive Term in 2022. Recent solo show's include Star Face, Boardroom Committee Room, Glasgow, 2023 and Daisy Chains, Stallan-Brand, Glasgow, 2022 as well as being selected for 130 Years of Scottish Society of Artist's Annual Show at the Royal Scottish Academy, 2022-23. Orla Kane’s first solo show ‘Fields Adrift’ was at Blue Shop Gallery in January 2024. Orla Kane is represented by Blue Shop Gallery.
Sammi Lynch (b. 1995) begins by working from life with pastel on paper out in the landscape. These spontaneous drawings hold an energetic directness which Lynch then brings into the studio. Translating from her drawings as well as from memory, she uses oils to compose scenes that are more resolved, distilling the unruliness of the outdoors into fields of colour and expressive line. Her paintings evoke layered geologies, recalling places that feel simultaneously both geographically specific and universally shared. These more-than-geographical landscapes are suffused with human feeling. Through her work, Lynch investigates the effects of colour and composition on both optical and emotional levels. She repeatedly returns to the same sites to make drawings, noting how her emotions and observations vary according to seasonal shifts and her personal experiences. Born in North West England, Sammi Lynch now lives and works in London. She studied at Manchester School of Art and Kingston School of Art, and is a graduate of ‘The Drawing Year’, a postgraduate scholarship programme at the Royal Drawing School, London. Her inaugural solo show was at Blue Shop Gallery, and her first European solo show took place at Solito Gallery, Naples. Sammi Lynch is represented by Annely Juda Fine Art.
Jemima Moore (b.1992, Sharjah, UAE) lives and works in London. She studied History of Art at The University of Cambridge (2011-2014), Fine Art Diploma at West Dean (2021-2022) and completed a Masters in Painting at the Royal College of Art (2023-24). She has been nominated for the Contemporary British Painting Prize (2024) and has undertaken a residency with Megafield Gallery in Beijing, China (2025). She had her first solo show, Slipstream, with Blue Shop Gallery (London, 2025). Recent selected group shows include: Sensorium, Bompas & Parr (London 2025); Taste, OHSH Projects (Los Angeles, 2024); South Open 2, OHSH Projects (London 2024); Caper, Greatorex Street (London 2024); All This Wrath, Blue Shop Gallery (London 2024) and Works on Paper 5 and 6, Blue Shop Gallery (London 2023/4); Any Day Now, Copeland Gallery (2022 London). Her work is held in private collections in China, Scandinavia, Europe, United States and the UK.
Morwenna Morrison (b. 1964) is based in Penzance. A BA(hons) graduate of the Exeter College of Art and
Design’s Fine Art programme, she has exhibited extensively across the UK as both a solo artist and a contributor to group shows in the UK and abroad. Morwenna has been selected on several occasions for the RA summer show, The RWA annual open exhibition, and the Lynn Painter Stainers prize. Morrison's works draw influence from a carefully curated collage of archival imagesand/or contrived theatrical pieces constructed in the studio. Morrison posits her work as being ‘an analysis of today’s social, psychological and political issues, set within a historical context’.
Josh Raz (b.1993, UK) Lives and works in London, UK. Josh Raz graduated from Newcastle University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art and currently resides in London. Since winning the Hix Award in 2016, Raz has produced Four solo shows, ‘The Atrophy Experience’, Hix Gallery, London (2017), ‘Hubris and a Whimper’, Abject Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (2018), ‘Joyride’, Bermondsey Project Space (2021) and ‘Trails Through a Reverie’, Ronchini Gallery (2022). He has been featured in GQ magazine (May 2017) and more recently in Artmaze Magazine (November 2021). Raz also completed a residency in Al Cuz Cuz, situated in the mountains of Malaga, Spain and was featured in Ronchini Gallery’s booth at Dallas Art Fair (2023). He has participated in a number of group shows, including ‘Love is the Devil’, held at Marlborough Gallery (2022), ‘Uncovers’ (2019), held at Christie’s and Unit London and more recently, ‘A New Sensation’, held at Galerie Marguo, Paris. Raz's solo show 'Shaken Ground' was at Blue Shop Gallery in 2023.
Tom Scotcher (b.1992) is a Lewes based artist who studied Visual Communication (BA Hons) at Central Saint Martins (2011-14) and thereafter at the Royal Drawing School (2016-17). In 2024, Tom was awarded with the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant of emerging figurative artists to produce a body of work for his solo exhibition, 'Desire Paths'.