‘Pastorale’: the material relations between persons and the social relations between things’
Wood and canvas tent lined with toile de Jouy. Two chromed mirror stands, engraved glass.

Dividing her time between Brittany and London, Sharon Kivland has exhibited extensively both on the continent and in Britain. Her particular interest in the 18th century Enlightenment has led her to focus on the French printed fabrics toile de Jouy, with their attractive depictions of rural idylls portraying an elaborate fantasy obscuring the reality of rural life.

Her piece involves a small campaign tent lined in toile de Jouy standing at the edge of the Meadow Gallery as on an outpost to guard the frontier between the reality of the land and an absurd ‘other world’, full of pastoral delights and convenient cultural clichés about nature. Two amorous peasants taken from the toile have also been engraved onto glass viewing plates, reminiscent of the Claude glass used in the eighteenth century to enhance the landscape.