Jesse Pollock has memories of making daisy chains at school, piercing the stem with his thumb nail and weaving another through, as he would pretend to get married wearing a circlet on his head. This sculpture, however, is about nostalgia as a disease. The flowers are swollen and weeping at the seams like an infected wound, each one forced into the next. Chain, from a distance is a gleaming portal to the countryside, a rose-tinted view on the past but up close it is drenched in frustration and reality.

Pollock’s works explore Arcadian visions through pastoral ideals with a dystopian undertone, examining patriotism and national identity with a conflicted awareness that manifests as bucolic convention. This juxtaposition means reality becomes distorted and contested. Using the countryside as a metaphor about human existence or construction and infected with nostalgia, Pollock believes that once a flower has been picked its life span is forced to speed up, as humans take over the control of something beautiful to satisfy desire.

Chain is made from powder-coated aluminium and the construction celebrates the artist’s hand and intention through visible welding, dents and folds.

Jesse Pollock (b.1993, Gillingham, Kent, England) studied BA Illustration, Camberwell College of Arts and BTEC Diploma, University of Creative Arts. Recent exhibitions include: State of Play, Brooke Benington & Canary Wharf (2022); Sculpture in the City, London (2022); Dream Weavers, Grove Collective, London (2022); Pink Gallery, Superzoom, Miami (2021); Sit Right Here And Watch The World Burn, Selfridges, London (2021); Arcadia, Bold Tendencies, London (2021); Nourishment ii, VO Curations, London (2020); La Totale 2020, Boissy-le-Chatel, France (2020); A Land of Incomparable Beauty, Collective Ending, London (2020); Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer 2020, Brooke Bennington, Fulmer (2020); The Garden of England, Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2020); Dieu To Old England, The Kids Are Alright, Choi and Lager, Cologne (2019); Super Zoom, curated by Ferdinand Gros, Paris (2019); Power of Ten, Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles (2019); Squeeze Hard Enough It Might Just Pop! Hannah Barry Gallery, London, (2018).