Jack Penny at Elveden Hall

HeritageXplore x The Dot Project

 Artist-in-Residence Programme |  Summer–Autumn 2025

This August Penny will develop Old Country – a new body of work which will be created during a summer-long residency at Elveden Hall. The exhibition will respond to the complex atmosphere of Elveden – a place shaped by empire, reinvention, and inherited tradition.

Penny’s practice is driven by a fascination with tribal instinct. He sees human behaviour as governed by primal urges – status, territory, belonging – masked by civility. His paintings are alive with tension, humour, and coded rebellion. Figures wrestle, withdraw, misstep, and defy; they seem both part of and apart from the systems they inhabit.

There’s mischief in every mark. Penny’s work refuses solemnity, leaning instead into irony and provocation. His paintings hold a mirror to the absurdities of social performance, where jokes and power plays blur.

Old Country will be both homage and disruption – an exploration of what it means to belong in spaces heavy with history. Drawing on British mythology and national memory, Penny’s paintings ask: who claims tradition, and who is left out? What rituals endure, and what gets rewritten?