Dirty Looks

A solo exhibition at Camden Arts Centre.

British artist Emma Hart presents Dirty Looks, a series of new sculptural works combining ceramics, photography and video.

Emma Hart does not make art that tries to make sense of the world. Rejecting the contemplative environment of the gallery space, she makes work that captures the confusion, stress and nausea of everyday experience. For Hart, there is a divide between the overwhelming chaos of reality and the way visual culture smoothes it out. Central to her work is a determined frustration with the limits and restrictions of the lens. Through sculpture, she corrupts digital images and spatially infects videos, ‘dirtying’ the images and squeezing more life out of them.

Hart’s practice often draws on her own embarrassment. Reflecting on her experience of working in a call centre in her early twenties, Dirty Looks serves up a cacophony of noise, imagery and ceramic objects. Chipboard cupboards with lopsided drawers, agitated service industry supplies and a homemade water cooler litter the space. Discomfort manifests itself in crudely made ceramic tongues, pulling open doors, escaping from furniture. This unexpected meshing of materials results in work that is raw, detailed and fractured.