I went back to Arnolfini this weekend, where I was a writer in residence all throughout the Covid-19 lockdowns, actually from October 2019 to July 2022.
It is a space I love deeply, and I always return, an art enue like few others according to me, where I always find time to connect with wonderful artists' works.
This autumn, the venue features a series by the British artist Emma Talbot (b.1969), in an exhibition titled 'Everything is Energy', in which she leads us through "a rich eco-system of works" – including silk painting installations, intimate drawings, sculptural forms, but also animation films.
Talbot calls the sculpters ‘intangible things’ – "each exploring the complexity of our relationship with nature, technology and the world around us," the gallery says.
‘What is life?’ is one of main questions addressed by this series, and what is behind life: spirits? meaning? connectedness? consciousness?
The artworks raise more questions as viewers go along, but one feels also comforted by the experience, not only anxious, as beauty and femininity calm the mind and nervous system.
Visual insight:
The paintings and sculptures are spread over the two floors of the gallery, and the third one also displays two animated films in the venue' 'Dark Studio', which were, personally, my favourite parts.
The gallery writes:
How we live in the world has long been a preoccupation of Talbot’s practice, which examines the role of humans within (and as the perpetrators of) the growing climate emergency amidst a changing geo-political landscape. These questions course in handwritten texts throughout two new monumental silk paintings; Everything is Energy and Are You a Living Thing That Is Dying or a Dying Thing That Is Living? which sit at the heart of the exhibition.
“There isn’t an action that doesn’t have some kind of impact on another thing, because that’s what we’re experiencing. Life is an accumulation of actions, and in that sense, energy moves through us," the artist said. "We’re full of energy in order to live… It’s a really good way of explaining and of thinking about what life is.”
In a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence and digital mediation, Talbot’s work offers a reminder of our fundamental connection to the natural world, and to one another. Everything is Energy invites us to slow down, question and to reconnect, harnessing the energy that flows throughout all living things, to ask us each ‘What can you gather before you retreat?’
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Emma Talbot is represented by Galerie Onrust.
Her work has been included in Milk of Dreams at The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2022).
Recent solo exhibitions include: A Journey You Take Alone, Kunsthalle Giessen (2023-2024), In The End The Beginning, Kesselhaus Kindl, Berlin (2023).
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