Crocodile Tears

Alcock’s surreal paintings tend to the idea of unyielding ‘care’ in a world of habitual apathy and

indifference—using the almost anarchic qualities of fragility, tenderness and conscientiousness as

both a delicate weapon of preservation and a means to confront its absence. Art history, the place of

the animal within it, and the shifting relationship between nature and humanity’s greater modes of

being all inform her imagery.

For this body of work, Alcock turns toward mythology, drawing on the Bestiary as an archive;

medieval scripts representing animals as symbols, allegories, and vessels of moral instruction. By

reimagining such stories through a surrealist lens, Alcock traces how animals have long been made

to bear human meaning, while also unsettling those hierarchies. Through the odd juxtapositions of

horror and humour, cognisance and obliviousness, her work seeks not to solve, but to make evident

the ethical, personal and ecological urgencies that arise from a lack of true care—inviting viewers

into a space of renewed awareness.