Emma Talbot

PRESSETEXT

Emma Talbot
Talking To Nature

Press Conferences: TUE, 10.09., 09:30

The multimedia exhibition, specially conceived for the project space Garage, will take place from 11 September 2024 to 5 January 2025; showcasing works by the internationally renowned British artist in Austria for the first time.

Large-scale paintings on silk combined with multimedia works in the space characterize the work of British artist Emma Talbot, which she has adapted for KunstHausWien, a museum of Wien Holding. In her unique world, populated by ghosts and nature spirits, the boundaries between humanity and nature blur into a higher unity. Emma Talbot’s works urge us to view nature not merely as a collection of resources but as a mirror of our own existence.

Gerlinde Riedl, Director of KunstHausWien: “What fascinates me about Emma Talbot is her ability to depict the natural and spiritual world as a living, intertwined whole. Her works form a perfect synthesis with the art of Hundertwasser and Anne Duk Hee Jordan. This interconnectedness and wholeness of natural processes is precisely what KunstHausWien aims to make visible from various artistic perspectives.”

Curator Barbara Horvath: “In general, Emma Talbot’s works are about what constitutes personal human experience. What inner narratives, personal thoughts, and feelings shape our understanding of the world? In this exhibition, this is also placed in a context we all share, namely our relationship with nature.”

The starting point of Emma Talbot’s works are subjective, intuitive drawings, from which paintings on silk, sculptural ensembles, and film animations are subsequently created. In the nearly 14-meter-long silk painting Ghost Calls (2021), the eerie appears as an echo of past possibilities and lost futures. Against the backdrop of the humanitarian and ecological crises of our time, the artist imagines a world after systemic collapse. On ten consecutive painted textile panels, presented on curved supports in the project space of KunstHausWien, faceless long-haired beings are depicted moving through this damaged world. Crouching, climbing, and running, they explore an epic landscape influenced by Scottish landscapes. Occasionally, the beings encounter mythical birds, ghostly apparitions hover above them; they recognize themselves as part of the cyclical process of life and death.

Talbot’s delicately drawn beings also appear in the film animation Keening Songs (2021). “Keening” refers to the Gaelic-Celtic tradition of lamentation, which is preserved in Ireland and Scotland. By animating her drawings and setting them in motion, Talbot brings her landscapes and figures to life. The images are accompanied by ambient sounds, whose rhythms are sometimes mixed with lamenting chants.

The three-dimensional work Talking to Nature (2020) embodies the dialogue between humans and the natural world. A female figure covered in a velvety texture sits opposite a snake – a symbol of wisdom, rebirth, and transformation in many cultures – and offers it a chain of red and green glass beads. This imaginary scene attempts to give shape to an intangible idea: Can one converse with nature?

Emma Talbot about her project in the KunstHausWien: “'Talking to Nature’ brings together work which explores relationships between contemporary humans and the natural world. The work suggests that there still remains a lot for us to understand about the power of the mysterious ancient, ongoing systems of our earth and universe. Through paintings, animation and three dimensional works, the proposal is that this connection is necessary, in order to imagine a viable future.”

About the Artist

Emma Talbot was born in 1969 in Stourbridge and studied at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art in London. The artist lives in London and Italy and is the winner of the 8th Max Mara Art Prize for Women. In 2022, she was featured in the main exhibition The Milk of Dreams at the Venice Biennale. Her works have been exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, the Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, the Beiqiu Museum of Contemporary Art, Nanjing, Victoria Miro, London, Eastside Projects, Birmingham, Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel, Arcadia Missa, New York, KM21, The Hague, Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent, Freud Museum London, Lisson Gallery, London, Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam, Petra Rinck Galerie, Düsseldorf, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, and Tate St Ives.


Curator
Barbara Horvath

Exhibition in the Project Room Garage in the inner courtyard
Free admission