Contact : hancockharrystudio@gmail.com
IG : hancockharry
Lives and works in London.
Harry Hancock’s work is informed by his experience as a scenic painter within the film and television industry, where artificial environments are continually constructed, altered and dismantled in order to create convincing realities. Film sets exist in a continual state of becoming; temporary landscapes, architectural fragments and fabricated histories appear momentarily complete before returning to their constituent parts. This tension between permanence and collapse forms the basis of Hancock’s paintings, exploring the processes through which realities are assembled, performed and reconstructed.
Working between painting, photography and moving image culture, Hancock examines the spaces where lived experience and its representation begin to overlap. His work considers why certain moments, stories and images are repeatedly reconstructed while others disappear. From survival narratives transformed into spectacle, to personal histories condensed into cinematic form, Hancock explores how events are reshaped through memory, retelling and performance.
Rather than viewing reconstruction as something opposed to authenticity, Hancock considers it as an essential way in which reality is understood and preserved. The labour, staging and repetition involved in producing believable worlds mirror wider processes through which identities, histories and experiences are continually formed. Images do not simply record reality; they actively participate in creating it.
Through scenes of staged environments, unseen labour and mediated landscapes, Hancock’s paintings occupy the uncertain space between the authentic and the artificial. They question whether there is ever an original reality untouched by its representations, or whether meaning is created through the continual process of reconstruction itself.
Education
2013 - 2016 BA Fine Art, Bath School of Art and Design
Exhibitions
2026 Open 06 - Excelsior Studios, London (group show)
2026 Hope - St.Art, London (group show)
2025 Bainbridge Print Open - ASC Handbag Factory (group show)
2025 Hyperreal Stages - St.Art, London (solo show)
2025 Works on Paper - Gallery Green & Stone, London (group show)
2024 The (Actually) Attainable Art Fair - St.Art, London (group show)
2024 Depth of Field - Excelsior Studios, London (solo show)
2024 Works on Paper - Gallery Green & Stone, London (group show)
2023 Open 04 - Excelsior Studios, London (group show)
2023 Open 03 - Excelsior Studios, London (group show)
2022 Ciocannesburg - Boos Closet, London (group show)
2021 Vignettes and Pathways - Crownpoint Studios, Glasgow (group show)