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Cottagecore and the Second Homes Crisis

From Planet 242

by Llinos Anwyl

Collage artist Llinos Anwyl investigates the online subculture of ‘cottagecore’, which has become popularised during the pandemic, and argues that the class dynamics of this aesthetic threaten to exacerbate gentrification in her home village of Moelfre and beyond.

As an artist predominantly using print media in my collages, unsolicited catalogues posted through the letterbox are usually welcomed as valued resources. My mam greets the mound of papers with an eye-roll as I balance another magazine on the stack of junk mail precariously hanging off the edge of the kitchen table, aka my studio. Like an archaeological cross-section, each layer represents a different period of my past hoarding: unopened health and fitness brochures, supermarket leaflets showcasing their latest offers, sofa companies advertising their never-ending season sale.

One morning, we received yet another unrequested magazine. This particular publication was a country home and lifestyle magazine reporting on north Wales and Cheshire, clearly aimed at a specific reader demographic. We weren’t the target audience.

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