London artist Georg Wilson opens "Against Nature," her second solo exhibition with Pilar Corrias, exploring the hidden world of poisonous plants in the English countryside. The show features paintings of henbane, thorn apple, and nightshade, depicting them as rebellious agents that thrive in abandoned, uncultivated land. Wilson's work coincides with her institutional debut at Jupiter Artland in Edinburgh, titled "The Earth Exhales." Her research began by collecting second-hand botanical books, which led her to notice toxic flora growing unnoticed around London, including a towering thorn apple near her studio.
Wilson is a defining figure of the para-pastoral movement, which challenges idealized views of the countryside by presenting nature as disruptive and confrontational. Her paintings upend traditional landscape painting, which she links to land ownership and nostalgia, instead offering a non-human perspective through poisonous plants. This matters because it reframes the English countryside as a site of hidden danger and ecological complexity, questioning romanticized myths about nature and inviting viewers to reconsider overlooked, toxic elements of the landscape.