To be animal

Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

Eva Gold

‘To be animal’

3 Oct – 15 Nov 2025

Text by Emily LaBarge

You may or may not recognise the mouth, wide open, all teeth, we might say, as one would of a scream that lasts and lasts and lasts: in a film (78 frames, 52 cuts, 45 seconds), or in a series of drawings (6, hung evenly around the walls), or in the mind where it takes on wild proportions, or on the inside of the eyelids, where all other iconic, haunting images reside, flicker and flame, open or closed.

She (we know it’s a she, know it in our gut, it usually is) elapses in sfumato hues around the precisely lit room in six frames (aluminium), which were once six frames (celluloid), but the mouth — the scream, the teeth, the dripping water, or is it saliva, the tongue, the cheeks, which all change ever so slightly from drawing to drawing, which is also frame to frame — upon close examination, frozen in time and space, takes on a visual life of its own, repeated into abstraction.

Look at something long enough and it will begin to make strange, to shift before your eyes. Look at how dark the black of the mouth is, like a charcoal dust cave. Discern, face up close, how soft the image is in spite of its glaring content: the charcoal dust has been applied with makeup brushes, as if preparing the woman for her close up. Notice how close a scream brings the human to the animal: an involuntary utterance, born of fear alone (to terrify, scare), that comes from deep within, wrenches control from the utterer as it rips through her body and flies into the air. A scream functions as a siren, an alarm, the internal spilling into the external — a moment of abandon, when the imposition of being perceived, required to behave (human, not animal), to not make a fuss, to not draw to much attention to oneself, breaks down.

We do not know what comes before or after this sequence of wide-open mouths, but we can imagine. Is that better or worse? Horror thrives on the unsaid and unseen, on the threatened and implied. So does desire, another immaterial quantity that dies when it becomes too explicit. Overhead, the fluorescent lights have a pale pink sheen, almost inapprehensible, especially after some time has passed and the eye adjusts. The subtle intervention results from the installation of lights used in butcher shops: the slight adjustment of colour is designed to make the dead flesh fleshier, more delicious looking, as in bloodier, more red, plumped up like a pair of lips attended to with devotion in the manner of say, a young girl who has read, with great consideration, the advice offered in a teen magazine about how to take the best selfie, to turn herself into an image, an object to be observed and, as such, desired, since there is no desire without witness, gaze, attention, scrutiny.

In this very spare but very carefully staged space, it is as if we are inside the scream, inside the mouth, which is also an orifice for pleasure. We are on a movie set, or in a cinema in which no film is playing, but the theatrical trappings evoke an alien, yet intensely familiar, atmosphere. You may or may not recognise the mouth, the butcher’s illumination, may not notice that the sound in this space is also vaguely muffled, by duvets pressed between the window and the wall that obscures it, but you will, sooner or later, like contagion, feel the scream burbling deep down, ready to erupt.

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Eva Gold (b. 1994, Manchester, UK) lives and works in London, UK. After completing her BA at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2016, Gold went on to complete a Postgraduate Diploma at the Royal Academy of Art, London in 2019. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Shadow Lands, Silke Lindner, New York (2024); City of Rooms (part one) with Louise Bourgeois, Rose Easton, London (2023); City of Rooms (part two), Rose Easton at The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2023); Slow Dance, Eigen+Art Lab, Berlin (2022); The Last Cowboys, Ginny on Frederick, London (2022) and Perv City, at Parrhesiades in collaboration with Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London (2020). Selected group exhibitions include: STEADYSTATE, ZERO..., Milan, IT (2025); Air de Repos, CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, FR (2025); SL x RE, Silke Lindner, New York (2024); Channel, organised by Figure Figure, CACN Centre d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes, FR (2024); The Living House, Van Gogh House, London (2023); Stilled Images, Tube Gallery, Palma de Mallorca (2023); Ideal Shapes of Disappearing, Silke Lindner, New York (2023); Not before it has forgotten you, Nicoletti, London / The Pole Gallery, Paris (2022); Lock Up International, Brussels (2022); SEX, Rose Easton, London (2022); Corps, MAMOTH, London (2021); Sets & Scenarios, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (2020); Barely Furtive Pleasures, Nir Altman, Munich (2020) and General Meeting, Freehouse, London (2019). Her work is in the permanent collection of Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo. To be animal is Gold's second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Photography by Jack Elliot Edwards.

Eva Gold, The insides of my eyelids, duvets packed into the wall cavity, dimensions variable

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Eva Gold, The Passer-by, 2025, ink-jet print on paper, 29.7 × 21 cm, unlimited edition

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Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

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Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

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Eva Gold, 4–5AM, 2025, meat counter lights, dimensions variable

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Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

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Eva Gold, To put your best face forward, your lighting needs to be on your level., 2025, charcoal on paper, welded aluminium frame, 56.4 × 99.8 × 3.5 cm

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Eva Gold, To put your best face forward, your lighting needs to be on your level., 2025 (alternative view)

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Eva Gold, To put your best face forward, your lighting needs to be on your level., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, To put your best face forward, your lighting needs to be on your level., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, Think of your face as a vertical line, and make sure the surface of your light source is parallel to it., 2025, charcoal on paper, welded aluminium frame, 56.4 × 99.8 × 3.5 cm

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Eva Gold, Think of your face as a vertical line, and make sure the surface of your light source is parallel to it., 2025 (alternative view)

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Eva Gold, Think of your face as a vertical line, and make sure the surface of your light source is parallel to it., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, Think of your face as a vertical line, and make sure the surface of your light source is parallel to it., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

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Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

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Eva Gold, You want to make sure you're facing the right direction to make the most of the light., 2025, charcoal on paper, welded aluminium frame, 56.4 × 99.8 × 3.5 cm

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Eva Gold, You want to make sure you're facing the right direction to make the most of the light., 2025 (alternative view)

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Eva Gold, You want to make sure you're facing the right direction to make the most of the light., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, You want to make sure you're facing the right direction to make the most of the light., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

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Eva Gold, Angle your camera to be faced down slightly, and snap., 2025, charcoal on paper, welded aluminium frame, 56.4 × 99.8 × 3.5 cm

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Eva Gold, Angle your camera to be faced down slightly, and snap., 2025 (alternative view)

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Eva Gold, Angle your camera to be faced down slightly, and snap., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, Angle your camera to be faced down slightly, and snap., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, Natural light that's soft and diffused is always best., 2025, charcoal on paper, welded aluminium frame, 56.4 × 99.8 × 3.5 cm

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Eva Gold, Natural light that's soft and diffused is always best., 2025 (alternative view)

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Eva Gold, Natural light that's soft and diffused is always best., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, Natural light that's soft and diffused is always best., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

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Eva Gold, Make sure to wipe your front camera clean—sweat and makeup can get in the way and reduce the crispness and clarity of your images., 2025, charcoal on paper, welded aluminium frame, 56.4 × 99.8 × 3.5 cm

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Eva Gold, Make sure to wipe your front camera clean—sweat and makeup can get in the way and reduce the crispness and clarity of your images., 2025 (alternative view)

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Eva Gold, Make sure to wipe your front camera clean—sweat and makeup can get in the way and reduce the crispness and clarity of your images., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, Make sure to wipe your front camera clean—sweat and makeup can get in the way and reduce the crispness and clarity of your images., 2025 (detail)

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Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

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Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

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Eva Gold, To be animal, Rose Easton, London, 3 October – 15 November 2025

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