Project Room: The Stillness of the Garden

The exhibition reflects on the stillness of time spent in nature, and the way such moments are held and reshaped through memory. Painted after the close of summer, the works look back towards warmer months: gardens in full bloom, figures at rest and spaces shaped by sunlight. Rather than depicting specific places, Perkins draws from her personal memories and imagination, creating scenes that feel at once familiar and slightly removed from reality. There is a sense of longing within these paintings, but also an attention to the pleasure found in colour, pattern, and abundance. Perkins’ distinctive style is informed by a longstanding interest in decorative traditions. References to vintage textiles and the illustrated books of her childhood emerge through densely patterned surfaces and heightened colour, while the looseness of her brushwork prevents the compositions from becoming fixed or overly resolved. Figures, foliage and interior details appear to shift into one another, allowing each painting to operate less as a record of a particular scene than as a remembered atmosphere. Across The Stillness of the Garden, Perkins approaches the garden as a space shaped as much by memory as by experience, a place of colour, abundance and pleasure. Rather than dwelling on the passing of summer, the paintings celebrate the moments it leaves behind: time spent outdoors, the richness of nature in full bloom, and the quiet joy found in familiar surroundings. Through her embrace of pattern, saturated colour and maximalism, Perkins transforms these memories into vivid, exuberant scenes that hold onto the fullness of lived experience. Camilla Perkins (b. 1990, Hastings) lives and works in Lewes, East Sussex. She graduated from the University of Westminster in 2012 and has developed a distinctive painting practice centred on colour, pattern and the natural world. Working primarily across painting and drawing, Perkins creates richly constructed scenes in which memory and observation overlap, often returning to gardens, interiors and the figure as recurring subjects. The Stillness of the Garden marks her third solo exhibition with RHODES.