The Artists Who are Celebrating Queerness in Rural Britain

written by liv collins

When we think of queerness, how often do we associate it with the countryside? With rolling hills, snails and secluded stone villages? There exists a bucket load of stereotypes surrounding queerness and rural environments, like the preconceptions that rural spaces are backwards, unaccepting and lacking in queer networks. Although these tropes stem from truths, they are not the whole truth. For centuries, queer people have lived and worked with in rural spaces. Today, there is a growing cultural celebration of LGBTQIA+ identity, and with this, a budding recognition into the way that rural landscapes have shaped, and continue to shape queer lives.

Below are five contemporary artists who are navigating and celebrating the intersections of queerness and the natural world within Britain.

Flo Brooks

Installation view, Angletwich, Flo Brooks, Brighton CCA, Brighton, 2020. Courtesy of the artist, Brighton CCA and Project Native Informant, London. Photography by Rob Harris.

Flo Brooks is a multidisciplinary artist who creates kaleidoscopic artworks which draw on his experiences of growing up in rural Southwest England. Using acrylic paint, installation, words and more, Flo builds dreamlike assemblages of everyday scenes which spill across walls, floors, and the viewers own imagination. In his exhibition Angletwitch, Flo produced a number of works which centred on rural archetypes, from the lonely bus stop to the livestock show - reimagined and rebuilt through the lens of his own queer and trans lived experiences. Each scene is filled with people at work and at leisure, plants sprouting, shared glances, blue outlines, and the detritus of life which follows in their wake. Together, they form a collective archive of queer everyday existence in rural England.

Marleigh Layne

Marleigh Layne. Courtesy of the artist.

Marleigh Layne is a black queer artist who explores the intersection of queerness and the natural world, through bold and upbeat artworks. Using an illustrative style, Marleigh animates symbols plucked from nature, accompanied with empowering phrases - to celebrate queer identity. In the textile piece above, exhibited at Studio Voltaire in partnership with the Queer Youth Art Collective, the artist frames the central word ‘Queer’ with four smiling characters collected from the natural world. Through the use of these ecological elements, Marleigh reiterates the naturalness of queer identity, “nature is queer and being queer is natural.” From the smile of the yellow sun to the kind gaze of the five-petalled flower – the artist reveals a collage of queer joy. 

Llyr Evans

Untitled, 2022, Llyr Evans. Courtesy of the artist.

 Llyr Evans is an Anglesey born, London-based visual artist, working at the intersection of fashion, documentary and fine art photography. His cinematic photographs explore themes of identity and solitude, and conceptually dive into the unique inspirations which inform them. In Untitled, Llyr reconstructs an anecdote about Henry Cyril Paget (an important figure in queer Welsh history), where Paget covered the entire contents of a Parisian jewellery shop onto his newly married wife. Inspired by Paget’s defiant and fluid identity, Llyr re-interpretated this scene by being coated in gold and lying in and amongst the Welsh hillsides. Commenting that this is a landscape he does not always feel welcome in, Llyr uses photography to build alternate worlds within it, “I don’t feel as constrained in the work I make as I may do in the physical world.

Chloe Filani

 Chloe Filani is a British-Nigerian poet, performance artist and feminist. Using poetry as a vessel for self-expression, Chloe creates works filled with imagery, emotion, and her experiences as a black trans womxn. In her poem Purple Black, Chloe imagines a lavender landscape which is a safe, playful haven for black womxn and girls - where they can run, rest and exist freely. The joy is palpable, until the artist punctures this scene with the sentence, “only if this moment was true – I wake to know these fields don’t be”. Revealing that this scene wasn’t real, existing only as a utopia within her mind. This poem highlights how rural spaces are often imagined as idealised and liberated landscapes – free from prejudice. When in reality, they often lack networks and safe spaces for queer people of colour. 

Purple Black by chloe filani

Lavender fields may we play

Black girls in a field all day

The lights reflected on violets, purples and petals.

Purple black each shades just as full and nurturing with life

Violet black, she jumps and screams

‘Got ya’

Grabs, squeezes

Tightly

Gently

Holds, embosoms

Pink blushed, black girls on cheeks, black girls grinning and giggling,  smiling and laughing

Bellowing through the grass the green

The glaze

Blazing in this summer joy on shimmering

Melanin

Rolling round, racing, running, releasing reliefs, regenerating, rejuvenating  rejoicing

radiating radical black love for her to her to you to hers she’s filled

Full

Bloated with love

Only if this moment was true

I wake to know these fields don’t be

But I know my sis, my black, my joy, is.

Is real

Kerry Tenbey

Kerry Tenbey. Courtesy of the artist.

Kerry Tenbey is a researcher and maker living in the Northwest of England. Their experimental work interweaves themes of human connection, materiality, and what it means to be a queer individual within different landscapes. Growing up in a working-class coastal town, the countryside always seemed like a place to escape, away from everyday rhythms and responsibilities. Kerry’s current research is focused on how we occupy rural spaces, the rituals we perform there and the traces we leave behind. “There is something interesting in the freedom of being in rural landscapes which allows you to express yourself in a more authentic way. When no one is looking or judging… there is a feral-ness or primality that emerges. This is why I believe that nature is inherently queer.”