Anne Hardy - Visiting Lecturer at Plymouth University

Anne Hardy was introduced as an artist who "....uses spaces of the imagination that are grounded in an Urban reality....."

Images Courtesy of www.anne-hardy.co.uk

Detached

Centre

 Incidence

Anne Hardy uses the photograph as a view of a space and how it can depict the occupation of people after it is no longer in use. She said her work is "The Space being more than what you see"

Her work is a construction of found objects and everyday materials which she uses to create a stage that show the spaces of the aftermath of activity or events. The spaces are always devoid of human presence. They are a pictorial history of what has happened in that space.

She said of her art work Detached

 "I often use words that have multiple meaning - the title of one photograph, is both a state of mind and an architectural description. I like the idea that the titles, like the images, can allude to to both a physical and a psychological space"

Anne Hardy creates the stages in her studio and uses a Large Format Camera to photograph the work. She said that one of her greatest inspirations is the author JG Ballard, whose stories inhabit a world of alien places. She combines the real with fiction, developing an image and relating it to the real world.

At first I wasn't sure that I understood what she is trying to convey, but the more I look at her images, the more I understand the space. They remind me a little of Jeff Wall's work, and I find that they also have a mystery and depth that draws the viewer into that space making you look beyond what is there. This is perhaps more obvious in Centre where a door leads you to some stairs, giving the space an extra layer of depth. In Incidence the use of mirrors gives the image a three dimensional aspect. There is a recognition of the objects and of what has taken place in that space in a social historical context. I find her work thought provoking and insightful. I also like her use of words that have more than one meaning.

As I am currently working on my Allotment project looking at the space over a period of twelve months I was interested to hear how Anne Hardy creates scenes of spaces where there is a meaning in the aftermath of the use of that space. Some of the photographs I have shot at the Allotment show activity after the event. This is a space in the Allotment that I photograph every time I visit; there is constant movement of the chair and evidence of human intervention in the plot surrounding the space, as well as nature taking its course in the seasonal changes.