Modern Art Oxford, Oxford
7th November 2015 – 10th January 2016
On entering the gallery we encounter the first work by Anne Hardy, titled Pacific Palisades faded into remote vision, 2014/15 and are given a cosmology of a studio wall space, as a digitally printed image on a wooden billboard type support. The image is of digs, scrapes and the stapled corners of pieces of coloured paper, now removed and no longer present; but what’s left embedded in the wall creates a universe. A photographic trompe l’oeil shelf with pencils, an illusion of three-dimensionality, are left for us to create a world with. The metaphor for creativity over time and in process is poetic and beautifully articulated in the installation. Geometric, platonic sculptural forms are physically material within our viewing space and almost invite a playful re-arrangement within the area.
From here we enter Pitch Black, a smooth echo/ A scoop with a shelter, 2015, the biggest of the works within the show. Blue felt carpet curves in the space and under a wooden structure which balances on building blocks of concrete and wood, with white strip lighting arranged around the exterior. This is the stuff/ fabric of the blue-screen studio, re-imagined as artwork object. We are given a stage, with a perimeter, where we can edge against the gallery wall and exist off the space of performance but inevitably shift from observing to participants in the narrative of blue. The colour echoes a version of a cosmic world found in Renaissance religious paintings. The geometric elements are so cranky in their lack of perfection, but yet do the job of holding up the wooden structure, with its occasional fluorescent orange marks. Light emanates from underneath, creating another tone, within the landscape. The ambiguous structure has two sets of stairs leading into it, with strict instructions for two visitors maximum at any time. The interior of the structure is modest and has some basic architectural elements and a sound work. The sound is pieced together recordings of art making and narrated text of atmospheric moments; the former echoing Robert Morris’ work ‘Sound of its own making’, 1961, but here there is no poking fun at the mythology of artistic genius, this is a journey of remembrance, an act of documenting ‘making’ time. The entire work has an otherliness to it that is reminiscent of a space beyond our experience, a hut in the sky; but the poor recycled and domestic materials are known to us and interrupt our escape. We can see the staging, we can see beyond the blue hang to the gallery beyond, but the installations seduction draws us back down to this other world. The heavens should be upward, toward the roof of the building, but it is the other way around, the heavens, the sky, are on the ground.
The third space has a number of framed works, called Process Photograms, ♯1, 2, 3,4, 6, 10,13 &15, 2015. These are images created by Anne Hardy from the daily sweepings of the studio environment, using the debris and dust of the days creating, to make abstract images.
The final space and work Punctuated Remains, 2015, is a yellow room, carpeted from ceiling edge to floor and entry demands the removal of your shoes. This is a habitat for sculptural proposals, a place for material play; these echoes of Minimalism past, formal arrangement and drawing in space, lie within a visual field of colour. For a moment, intellectually I confront the possibility of being in a colour field or Miro painting with forms, objects, mappings, levitating in space, but gravity is too evident and the individual components, works, remain too dependent on wall and floor, to be convincing.
Overall this is a show of two halves. The first two works are theatrical, poetic and beautifully rendered. We engage with an idea of artistic creation and its potential affinity to a concept of Godly creation. From nothingness came everything, from the cosmos, to the sky, to human endeavor. There are some moments in the latter part of the show, which develop the formal play of the first, but the symbolism and composition is less assured.
This was an impressive presentation of the work of Anne Hardy and I await her next show with anticipation.