╸ First solo exhibition in Korea of British sculptor Emma Hart (b. 1974), winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women — presenting new large scale ceramic pieces that combine artistic finesse and sharp observation of our current society.
╸ Works based on the experience and observations of an artist coming from a working class background who in her words "operates in the middle class artworld."
╸ Works explore how language and the way we speak reveal us and become a standard for judging and categorizing ourselves and others.
╸ The 'Speech Bubble' works, express the anxiety, self-doubt, and embarrassment due to the social, hierarchical, and regional backgrounds exposed by language and its use; new unique works include integrate Korean words and their shapes.
╸'Imposter Syndrome', a psychological state of anxiety in which a person feels that he or she is a fraud or fake, is connected to the artist's practice that reflects the feeling of 'not belonging' due to the way one speaks
╸Behind the humorous and bright colored work, the exhibition reveals the way verbal and non-verbal communication signs and systems 'use' human beings to perpetuate their power.
Barakat Contemporary presents BIG MOUTH, a solo exhibition by British artist Emma Hart (b. 1974), from November 24 (Wed), 2021 to January 23(Sun), 2022. This is the first solo exhibition in Korea by Hart, a winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women (2016). Working in ceramics, Emma Hart creates sculptures that comically twist familiar objects to explore the social systems that guide and control us. Bringing together a series of new large- scale ceramic sculptural works, Hart irreverently explores the pressures of being an artist that comes from a working class background, who as she puts it "operates in the middle class artworld." According to a recent study1 working-class people are hugely under-represented in the UK arts. Yet Hart imagines her artworld-generated anxieties often resulting in feelings of "not belonging", or "not quite fitting-in" to middle class culture are universally felt, not least in South Korea where, like the UK, there is a large discrepancy in social equality. For BIG MOUTH, she uses her ceramic sculptures to perform and play out the power dynamics embedded in an unequal class-based society. Her imposing sculptures tell you where to look, where to go and even put words in your mouth. Social class has always been an important theme in Hart's work: "my class background is held in my mouth, in how I speak and what I say, and unfortunately each time I open it, I spit out my history and risk being judged." BIG MOUTH explores how, as a society, we use verbal and non-verbal signals to communicate, while at the same time use these signals to classify and critically judge each other. self and others while classifying its members into different social groups. These verbal and non-verbal signals include not only speech itself but also voice, intonation, facial expressions, gestures, and posture—and more broadly, they extend to tastes and even cultures enjoyed by groups. At the center of BIG MOUTH is the observation of an implicit hierarchical society where people are categorized according to their use of verbal and non-verbal signals. Hart's work examines the pressure and impact this puts on human interaction and relationships.
Acting as gatekeepers to the exhibition Hart presents four large ceramic megaphones – Feedback (2021), Crying Shame (2021), Drama Queen (2021), and Spoiler (2021). The exuberant sculptures directly confront the visitor, demanding a one to one relationship with them. Displayed at head height, she ensures the viewer comes eye to eye with the work. Faces with vivid color speak into the megaphone – an amplification device used to project oneself – but what comes out has literally been twisted or spun and messed up. Hart's megaphones humorously manifest the awkward sensation of saying the wrong thing too loudly.
Three tall 'Fingerpost' sculptures– You're All Over the Shop (2021), Social Climber (2021), and Look You Up and Down (2021) – control the downstairs gallery space. Based on the idea of traditional signposts a chaotic stack of warped ceramic fingers tell the visitor what to do. They point out where you need to go and where you need to look, whilst also pointing directly at the viewer themselves. Walking around the works, makes you feel self conscious, as the sculpture shoves accusing fingers in your direction; at your head, in your face, at your feet. They direct their pointed fingers all over your body; they want to expose you, they have found you out! They might make you feel like a fraud and induce Hart's familiar sensation of Imposter Syndrome – the internal doubt of believing you are not as good as the people that surround you.
For BIG MOUTH, Hart has worked for the first time in unglazed black and white stoneware. Seeing parallels between how we personally present ourselves to the world; keeping our raw selves private yet adopting glossy persona's in public and how clay is presented as either raw bisque or superficially glazed - Hart has stripped back her ceramics, using them in their crude state to build things with, rather than decorate their surface.
The eponymous work Big Mouth (2021) continues Hart's use of black and white stoneware, inlaying the clays into each other to form contrasting circular patterns which become targets. Hart has manipulated the traditional design of targets used for archery, darts or shooting, by pulling the bullseye or center down to the position of a mouth on a face. A crowd of various targets dominate the gallery wall and shout at the viewer with their red open mouths. The concentric circles of the design take on the appearance of sound waves emanating from their mouths. The physically dumb sculptures are visually loud and noisy demanding attention yet a target is inherently self conscious being purposefully designed to be looked at. Hart unpicks at conflicting emotions generated when presenting ourselves – the desire to be seen versus the self doubt and embarrassment of being noticed.
Hart's work often seethes with a violent undercurrent. The viewer can often feel under attack. At the back of the downstairs gallery, a horizontal succession of Bats fling their tubular arms out, gripping table tennis bats that are aimed at your head. Made completely in ceramic, the delicate appearance of the work belies an unspoken aggression. They want to knock you about, and make you feel battered.
Upstairs, Hart presents her ongoing series of speech bubbles – Raver (2021), Dummy (2020), GO ON (2021), Oi Oi (2021), Lies (2020), 이면 'imyeon' (My Dark Side) (2021), 입방정 'ipbangjeong' (Loose Lips) (2021), and 양다리 'yangdari' (Two-timer) (2021) – showing the largest group to date for BIG MOUTH and incorporating a different language to English – Korean – for the first time. Large ceramic speech bubbles, more commonly found in comics, jut out from the wall. The words they contain have been carefully selected, and the layout of the text transforms the speech bubble into looking like a face. Letters become ears, eyes or mouths and the form of the speech bubble in turn becomes the head that holds them. Hart was spurred on to experiment with using Hangul, when she found out that many of the characters directly reference the mouth, further emphasising the relationship between the pictorial mechanics of Hangul and the facial features.
Standing in front of the speech bubbles, the viewer also becomes the speaker. They forcibly put Hart's words in your mouth, giving you words to say, such as "Oi Oi", which are maybe not part of your own vocabulary. Almost two faced, the speech bubbles are split. They are split between a glossy public outside and a red raw inside, which represents the internal "glow of shame" or the flicker of a "shadow of doubt" that Hart feels when she opens her mouth and says something. We are all able to publicly say one thing, and internally feel another.
Hart's original yet risky approach to working with ceramics results in technically complicated work that exceeds our expectations of the medium. Going beyond making vessels or pots, Hart sets her ceramics to make 'situations'. Situations which the viewer enters and then finds themselves centre stage. Rather than generate meaning, Hart's work generates experience, and maybe Hart's feelings, doubts, anxieties and experiences aren't that far away from your own.
Press release courtesy Barakat Contemporary.
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