EMMA HART AT THE FRUITMARKET

BANGER / MAMMA MIA!:

Hart’s installations oscillate between the comfort we find in domestic spaces and the disruptive, confrontational language of crude symbols pivoting around the subject of vehicles. Hart’s work seems to spawn from visual and verbal puns, dual meanings draw us closer and push us apart from seeing and unseeing, understanding and overlooking. 

PERSONAL RESPONSE:

After having read criticism and scrolled through the Twitter tirades directed at The White Pube for their criticism of the Liverpool Biennial 2018, I approached this exhibition in a perhaps, sceptical way, wary of ensuring I fully understood the meaning behind the bright, bold sculptures before dismissing them with the phrase ‘oh its just conceptual’. 

MAMMA MIA!:

Firstly, Mamma Mia! on the ground floor consisted of ‘bulbs’ hanging from the ceiling with bits of cutlery attached acting like propellors. The bulbs projected a speech bubble like shape onto the floor inviting you to stand in the spotlight and look up into the bulbs filled with mural-like paintings. Now, The Wee Review goes on to describe this very experience of looking up at these paintings as 'painfully human, down-to-earth and virtually impossible not to identify with’. Personally, I feel such a description is a bit elaborate. Yes, the style of the paintings feels quite juvenile- I imagine a child sitting inside one of these bulbs, in a sort of 'headspace’ allowing their thoughts and wonders to reveal themselves through brushstrokes and painterly doodles. The bulb form reminded me of Erika Vogt’s show at Mary Mary in Glasgow last summer where large scale papier-mâché giant yellow gladiator helmets were suspended from the ceiling.  Formally, Hart is referring to family dynamics underpinned by her study of a Milanese approach to family therapy and the Italian majolica style of earthenware. To me, this does not seem overtly obvious- the family therapy theme anyway- which isn’t necessarily a criticism, the contrast between the weighty ceramic sculptures and the soft light of their projections provide vessels of calm and contemplation as though the earth had been tipped upside down, our heads in the clouds but our thoughts and sentiments poured out on the floor. 

(link to Erika Vogt here: https://www.marymarygallery.co.uk/artists/erika/)

BANGER:

When I first read the title of Hart’s second body of work with the Mamma Mia! theme tune in mind I immediately thought of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang due to Hart’s consistent referral to elements of the vehicle. As I got to the top of the stairs I just about fell into the first of the sculptural series entitled 'Just Because Your Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They Are Not After You’. Fun! I like it, works that aren’t set up in a conventional hanging/viewing scheme are different and engaging. Wing mirrors, windscreens and fragments of cars all realised in ceramic are dispersed throughout the gallery space. Here, primary colours make me think of words of warning: danger, beware and caution. We navigate our way round these works as we made do in our own lives- consciously and cautiously.