Eve Aspland

Eve Aspland is a painter based in South London, originally from Devon. Her paintings begin as emergent images, informed by post-industrial spaces where the landscape holds its own memories; to paint it is to misremember it once more. Aspland draws from archival photographs, folklore and memory to conjure feelings both fleeting and ancient. Sedimentary materials such as sand, rust, chalk and thin washes of oil paint allow a sense of seepage into the works, which are formed as much from the sounds and sentiments of a place as they are from the landscape itself.

Aspland studied Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and currently works from her studio in Herne Hill. Recent exhibitions include High Noon (2025), a group show at Greatorex Street, Whitechapel, and Osiers (2025), a solo show at St John’s College, Oxford.

For this new series of work for 8 Holland Street, Aspland draws on watery places, such as flooded farmland, peatlands, or burst riverbanks. Developed from an archive of photographs of 19th- and 20th-century fenland industries, alongside sketches made in the Outer Hebrides, water, building, and landscape blend from one state into another. Colour acts as layers of disturbed sediment, as a haze to certain forms, and figures are rarely seen fully formed. Where a sedge barge meets the water, its contents spill off, while the architectural form of a jetty sits to ground this looseness. In each work, there is a concern with understanding an image outside of time: nothing is archaic, as the form of a woad mill can be understood as the underside of a bridge. Aspland uses such focal points to delineate between memory and photographic reference.

Image: Eve Aspland photographed in her studio