25/2/2005
Anne Hardy
ArtSway, Sway
Recent photographs. The act of using found and discarded objects within the sets is at once both playful and disturbing. The images produced have an unease which reflects the artists interest in decay and change and the suggestion that the world we inhabit may not be as under our control as we would like to think.
Solo exhibition
ArtSway is pleased to present an exhibition of recent photographs by Anne Hardy, including new images produced during her residency at the gallery in Autumn 2004. She was ArtSway Artist in Residence during October and November 2004. Anne produces photographs which appear to be real spaces but are in fact simulated environments. She makes constructed sets which explore hidden worlds or parallel realities which suggest an unseen underbelly within our everyday lives.
The act of using found and discarded objects within the sets is at once both playful and disturbing. The images produced have an unease which reflects the artists interest in decay and change and the suggestion that the world we inhabit may not be as under our control as we would like to think.
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Entering the studio of artist and photographer Anne Hardy is a transformative experience, akin to
Alice stepping through the looking glass; a trip to a parallel world. Her studio becomes in turn a stage-set, a self-contained universe, a vehicle for ideas that she assembles and constructs with
painstaking detail using everyday materials and found objects. Hardy begins the construction of her disconcerting stage-like sets from the viewpoint of her camera lens, a viewpoint that remains fixed throughout construction until the photograph is finished. The resulting images are exhibited as large scale (120cm x 150cm) colour photographs, under the title Interior Landscapes. This title evokes a sense of ‘hidden spaces’; spaces situated in urban environments; spaces that are neglected and forgotten or existing separate from everyday life.
Hardy’s photograph Lumber (2003 - 4) depicts what appears to be an unassuming, hastily
constructed room - all unpainted plasterboard and bulging foam sealant - which has become a last resting place for abandoned Christmas trees; these once precious festive objects have been
abandoned and left to decay. The author Rachel Taylor writes that images such as Lumber
‘function as surreal mementos mori’, and that they become ‘spaces of the imagination that follow their own inexorable logic.’
Hardy’s photographs are indicative of how modern man has constantly sought to control and
manipulate space, and how spaces and objects become overlooked and taken for granted.
Hardy’s imagery, however fantastical, is ultimately believable. One only has to refer back to the bulging foam sealant and unpainted plasterboard in Lumber to find a very real and tangible, tactile even, reminder of this ‘underbelly of the everyday’.
Anne Hardy lives and works in London. A portfolio of her work is featured in the autumn 2004/spring 2005 edition of Photoworks Magazine. In 2004 she was the first artist selected for the
Laing Solo exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle and her work was included in major group exhibitions in the UK (The House in the Middle, Towner Art Gallery, 2004) and abroad
(Really True!Photography and the promise of reality, Ruhrlandsmuseum, Essen, 2004).
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Exhibition related events:
Digital Photography Workshop
Saturday 12 March 2005 11am - 4pm
A workshop with Gina Dearden offering an opportunity to learn more about digital photography while responding to the current exhibition (for adults).
Portfolio Day:
Saturday 5 March 2005 11am - 4pm
Join Anne Hardy and Rachel Taylor, Assistant Curator, Tate, for an opportunity to show and discuss your work.
Kids Workshop: SCIENCE FACT
Tuesday 15 March 2005 4.30pm - 6.30pm
Join Southampton based artist Roy Brown as he investigates the scientific possibilities in the work of photographer Anne Hardy, then create artworks inspired by the exhibition (for 7 - 11 yr olds).
Youth Workshop: Set Design
Saturday 9 April 2005 11am - 4pm
Design and photograph with digital cameras your own mini-stage set inspired by the exhibition. With artist Rachel Larkins (for 12 - 17 yr olds).
This exhibition brings together work produced by Anne Hardy during an ArtSway Production Residency in November and December 2004 and work commissioned by The Laing Art Gallery. The artist has also received additional support from The British Council for the production of work in preparation for an exhibition at The Helsinki Photography Festival 2005.
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Anne Hardy's Interior Landscapes
Sometimes we get fixed on particular images, configurations of things that transcend their physical presence. We internalise them, turn them into private metaphors, return to them in dreams, try to puzzle out the hermetic secrets they hold. Anne Hardy's Interior Landscapes are vivid representations of our mental images of these places.
Pictures of strange, claustrophobic, often slightly menacing interiors, her photographs seem to document private passions taken to extremes. In some pictures the natural world intrudes, or threatens to intrude, inside. Vines are nurtured by artificial light in a shallow hatch; the large windows of a control room are piled high with dead leaves. Some of the Interior Landscapes function as surreal mementos mori: bare and forlorn tree trunks bedecked with thick cobwebs; antlers casting spidery shadows against a grubby wall.
A brightly lit room is stuffed with discarded Christmas trees. An interior is overrun with light bulbs and brightly coloured cables. These are spaces of the imagination that follow their own inexorable logic. We look for clues that might help us find our bearings but the spaces are alienating, speaking of unfathomable obsessions.
Hardy constructs the interiors in her studio, using objects she has found in markets, DIY shops or on the street. She uses the tools of sculpture and architecture to produce her credibly eccentric interiors, and then photographs them before discarding the props and starting again. Each image has an unspoken back story. Like an actor getting in to character, Hardy imagines what has happened in each of her constructed spaces, giving them a powerful narrative resonance even if the viewer never knows exactly what stories the artist had in mind. This labour-intensive, performative aspect of her practice encourages us to bring our own responses to her parallel universes, these mysterious places of reverie and wonder.
Rachel Taylor, Assistant Curator, Tate
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Reception for the artist: Saturday 26 February 2005 2pm - 4pm (with artists talk at 3.30pm)
ArtSway
Station Road
Sway