Anne Hardy is a multidisciplinary artist working with sculpture, photography, sound and room installations. Her installations are incredibly immersive, her ability to transform objects and the space they inhabit so meticulous that they almost imitate a parallel reality. Hardy is inspired by life; it is by wandering urban landscapes and exploring spaces in the city that Hardy gets her influences for her installations. By incorporating found objects into her work, Hardy is guided by the materials and the physical spaces which she encounters. The work is intended to exist outside of time, or in alternate reality. Created over a period of months, the room installations are constructed with the frame of a photographic lens in mind. After the images are captured, the room then ceases to exist in the physical sense but is left to the imagination of the viewer, created by the image alone.
The print entitled Cipher is emblematic of Hardy’s ambitious room-sized installations. Cipher is meticulously composed, proactively evoking feelings of nostalgia to claustrophobia with an undertone of eerie whimsicality. The muted brown plastered walls are marred and textured, making the space appear weathered and aged. Combined with the illumination from the artificial light against the walls and the feathers on the floor, the print almost looks like a painting. In contrast to this sense of abandonment, the heavy lifting equipment and the numbers on the wall allude to evidence of human intervention. Like many of Hardy’s works, much is left to the imagination of the viewer regarding the interpretation of space and time.
Hardy has built a strong relationship with Tate. In 2019 she was commissioned to undertake the 2019 Winter Commission on the exterior of Tate Britain and between 30 November 2019 and 26 January 2020, The Depth of Darkness, the Return of the Light was installed on the Gallery’s façade. This acquisition facilitates Tate in their endeavour to build stronger representation of Hardy within the national collection and enable their audiences to understand the artist’s contemporary practice in full.
