About this Event
The Pleasure of Your Company, Florence Reekie
9/12/2025 - 2/2/2026, Queen Elizabeth II Room
Join us in the RSA's Queen Elizabeth II room for the opening of Florence Reekie's The Pleasure of Your Company. Works for this exhibition were created specifically for the House in conversation with the Royal Society of Arts' history and architecture.
Florence's practice investigates ethical concerns around consumerism today, as materialist desires come in direct opposition with the pressure of being a responsible consumer. She uses decadence as a tool to explore and challenge audiences, through gorgeous and sometimes hauntingly beautiful paintings.
Florence Reekie (b.1991) is a figurative oil painter from Scotland. Expectation, subversion, and decadence are important themes in Reekie’s work. Her paintings are often contemporary scenes drawing upon classical impressions and techniques. She is interested in developing ideas around perception, iconography and coding within compositions while experimenting with the materiality of paint.
Historically painters have used drapery as a means of bringing being and movement into compositions, by using material and only alluding to the human interaction Florence is able to deal with complicated themes in her work. An interest in drapery as not mere staging for the subject helps her to navigate her pieces. Fabric is often overlooked in both paintings and day to day life, simple crumpled laundry highlighted in paint suddenly take on a new resonance.
In her work to date, she explores troupes of identity, which come from ideas of vanity and how we present authentically. This often leads into historical comparisons and trends or ways in which we attempt to assimilate in society. She looks at the concept of beauty ‘secrets’, the trappings of the ways in which we attempt to make ourselves more desirable or construct our identity and the armours that we choose to do so.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The RSA, Queen Elizabeth II, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
