Lily Hargreaves‘ solo show at Piccalilly- Eat Soup or Die Trying, consists of a new body of paintings reflecting on the wellness industry in the early twentieth century; particularly the experimental fad diets and treatment centres that gained popularity in this era. This show explores the perceived link between fasting and cleansing, tracing through a long Catholic tradition of restricted eating and revisiting these worlds to consider how moralising consumption haunts contemporary conversations around food.
Soup takes centre stage in this series, inspired by the liquified blends of fruits and vegetables integral to these turn of the century programmes. Colanders, sieves, and cheese cloths take figurative form; tomatoes are pulped and strained in bodily mimesis. Free-flowing fluids are stiffly sculpted as foods are forced into strict, consistent striations. The human form is absent in consideration of the psychological causes for disordered eating, self-violence put forward as a grounding distraction from an external in flux.
Lily Hargreaves, Eat Soup or Die Trying, – 4th January 2025 Piccalilli
All images Install view Lily Hargreaves: Eat Soup or Die Trying at Piccalilli
About the artist
Hargreaves (b. 2000) is a painter based in London. She graduated from Goldsmiths with a BA in Fine Art in 2022 and from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Painting in 2024, the latter selecting her work as its annual painting acquisition. She has also previously been awarded the Tooth Travelling Scholarship and the BAGT Open Founder’s Prize, been a finalist for the ACS Studio Prize and Valerie Beston Prize, and been shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize.
