Opening Thursday November 5th.

In the exhibition If I Could Squeeze the Universe into a Ball, Lily Hargreaves’ point of departure is a strange and tragic episode from Europe’s interwar period: the mysterious story of the Galápagos Affair, which unfolded on the remote island of Floreana during the 1930s. A group of Europeans descended on the island with the idea of starting their lives anew — leaving civilisation behind and creating an existence on their own terms. However, their attempt to shape life according to their own ideas of freedom and self-determination instead developed into a story of power and conflict.

Lily Hargreaves (b. 2000, Reading, UK) is based in London. She received a BFA from Goldsmiths (2022) and an MFA from the Royal College of Art (2024), where her work was selected for the institution’s annual painting award. She has also been awarded the Tooth Traveling Scholarship and the BAGT Open Founder’s Prize, been a finalist for the ACS Studio Prize and Valerie Beston Prize, and been nominated for the John Moores Painting Prize. She has previously participated in the residency programmes Good Eye Projects and Xenia Creative Retreat.

If I Could Squeeze the Universe into a Ball is Hargreaves’ first exhibition in Scandinavia.