Sophie Standford

In the Forest Garden
A Rural Idyll
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
Photomontage
Performative Drawing
Act of Listening
About

@hortus_silvam

A Rural Idyll Selected Works

In the Forest Garden and A Rural Idyll are interconnected, ongoing projects creating work in various media, in direct response to a relocation to rural Suffolk. A search for the notional, romantic concept of the ‘rural idyll’ which continues to persist, discovering a landscape of increasing marginalisation, where the rural and industrial intersect and elide; where genetically engineered technologies increasingly turn fields into mono-cultured labs blurring the boundaries between the natural and the synthetic.

A rural idyll is particularly concerned with the concept of ‘nature’ beyond the boundaries of the Forest Garden, delving into the local East Anglian landscape, with which a complex and intimate relationship has developed through the practice of regular, repeated walking, observing and listening. The approach is reflexive and responsive, subjective and observational, allowing humour and the absurd to interact with tension and disquiet.

© Sophie Standford, 2026 
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