Pilar Corrias is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Kat Lyons. Titled Early Paradise, this will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK, showing thirteen paintings based on Lyons’ experiences living on a small, diversified livestock farm.
The ethos of the livestock farm seeks to understand the land at a basic ecological level, supporting its natural functions to reduce damage and, in turn, mitigate harm to the wildlife and animals raised for consumption on the farm. Despite these efforts, compromises are ultimately made to maintain commercial viability, and labour becomes a required exchange based on what is valued in an eco-capitalist system.
Categories of pet, pest, feral, domestic, wild, predator and prey are made more potent when individual labour value determines survival. Lyons became interested in the intersectionality of category, labour, and grief. Through her work, the artist challenges the normalisation of this emotion, suggesting instead, that it is not a defect to be remedied. On the farm, facing grief offers the chance to combat the harmful systems that leave animal husbandry often irresponsibly managed.
