Anne Hardy
26 February - 17 April 2005
Reception for the artist: Saturday 26 February 2005 2pm - 4pm
(with artists talk at 3.30pm)
Events
Rachel Taylor Text
Anne Hardy 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.
Anne Hardy recently exhibited at Newcastles Laing Gallery as the first Laing Solo Exhibition winner and is 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).
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). COST: £30
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. Contact Fotonet-south to make your booking on 02380 597003 or email: fotonet@soton.ac.uk Cost: £15, £5 unemployed, lunch included
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). COST: £10. Part of National Science Week
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). COST: £20
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.
Back to top
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
Back to top
Click here to return to Past Exhibitions menu.