The oeuvre of the artistic duo Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings (English, both born in 1991) has evolved around the subject of authority and social power dynamics that have been characteristic for specific groups, but that also seem to have a universal timeless quality. Working across film, performance, etchings, mosaics, and frescoes, which are all technically difficult artistic mediums that require specific skills, Quinlan and Hastings call their approach critical and celebratory at the same time. Pointing at oppressive community rules also applicable in progressive movements, they have analyzed the complicated history of conservative British white feminism Disgrace, 2021 and the masculine dominance in gay bars UK Gay Bar Directory (2015/2016).

Their elaborate fresco paintings, such as The Disinherited (2022), are loaded with art history references. This work refers to the fresco by the Italian artist Masolino from 1424, in the famous Brancacci Chapel in Florence, depicting the New Testament’s act of healing of the cripple and raising of Tabitha by St. Peter, combined with scenes from Florence city life in the early 15th century. The composition and the figures in The Disinherited refer directly to the fresco, however, transferring the situation to the contemporary British public space and showing social interaction between various people including a lesbian couple with a child, on the left. The work was exhibited in the duo’s solo exhibition of the frescoes, Tulips, at the Tate Britain in 2022. Similar to church frescoes, the ones in this series were also meant to tell stories loaded with visual symbolism, and to convey a moral massage.

Recently, Quinlan and Hastings received the prestigious commission to create a new permanent six-panel mosaic for the London Underground station St James’s Park, to be displayed from October 2024.