Every landscape is a history. — John Berger

There are few places in Europe where ideas of leisure have become so closely intertwined with the landscape as in Mallorca. For centuries, the island has occupied a singular position within the Mediterranean imagination: a place of extraordinary natural beauty, strategic importance, cultural exchange, and, more recently, escape. Yet beneath this familiar image lies another history, one less concerned with entertainment itself than with the conditions through which it is continuallyimagined, constructed, and sustained.

The exhibition takes its title from the Roman concept of otium. Although commonly translated as “leisure,” the Latin term carried a far richer meaning. For Cicero, otium described a state in which individuals could withdraw from political and commercial obligations in order to cultivate philosophy, literature, and civic reflection. Seneca later argued that true fulfillment did not lie in idleness, but in a disciplined form of contemplation—an attentiveness to the world that allowed both intellectual and moral life to flourish. Yet this freedom, enjoyed by the Roman elite, depended upon systems of labor that made such contemplation possible: the work of those who sustained the very conditions in which these recreational environments could exist. From its earliest philosophical formulation, otium was therefore never separate from labor but did instead rely on it.

This paradox remains strikingly relevant today. Hotels, villas, marinas and second residences transformed not only the coastline but the very identity of the island. In this way, leisure became one of Mallorca’s principal architectures.

Rex Southwick depicts coastal vistas, private villas, gardens, and the people who discreetly and consistently maintain them. Yet rather than offering either a critical view of the island’s dynamics or exalting it as a paradisiacal destination, his paintings strike a balance between these two perspectives, offering a third narrative in which both coexist. Alongside these expansive landscapes and carefully observed architectures, appear gardeners, housekeepers and maintenance workers who inhabit these spaces. They occupy the thresholds and move through environments designed to appear effortless. Rather than acting as a social commentary, they become the reminders that every landscape of retreat depends upon acts of continual care.

For the artist, painting itself belongs to the tradition he represents: to paint is to spend time looking attentively, to suspend productivity in favor of observation. The residency that gave rise to these works therefore becomes more than a practical circumstance: it is itself an enactment of the philosophical condition that Southwick explores.

In conclusion, Otium – The Labour of Leisure reveals that leisure cannot be conceived without labor, nor without history. The time devoted to rest, reflect, and retreat has always depended—and continues to depend—upon the time of others. In this sense, the exhibition is not simply a depiction of Mallorca. It is a depiction of an idea.

Rex Southwick (b. 1997) is a British artist. He received a BFA from Leeds Art University in 2018, before being awarded the AON Community Art Award. Southwick currently lives and works in London. He presented his debut solo exhibition at Unit, Qurencia, in 2019. Selected group exhibitions include Nassima Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv, Israel (2022); Playground of Geometry, Centre of International Contemporary Art Vancouver (CICA), Vancouver, Canada (2022) and Rites of Passage, Unit, London (2021). His work is held in several prominent public collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA, USA; Palm Springs Art Museum, CA, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA, USA; and Azman Museum, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.