PENGELLY  |  2022 - Ongoing  |  Cornwall, UK 

Sympathy for the Devil


These photographs are part of a substantial photographic record of the surroundings, and activities of two elderly, unmarried brothers who farm in Cornwall.  They have spent their lives working on the same land, however failing health and advancing age are undermining the viable continuation of this farm. One brother manages the animals and oversees the general farm work, whilst the other organises their food and medical prescriptions. When not doing this, he spends much of his time listening to his record collection. The Rolling Stones are by far his favourite.

The historian Patrick Joyce points to the fallacy of how, in contemporary society, we ‘aspire to join our internal lives, our personal subjectivities, with ‘nature’ so that we can be ‘at one’ with it’.  As he says, ‘this is a universe that in the present takes the sentimental view of nature as alternatively a garden or a wilderness’. However, those born into traditional agricultural cultures may understand things differently.

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This work is on show as part of  ‘Ammeth: Farming in Cornwall’ at Falmouth Art Gallery - Link