In her drawings, sculptures and animations, Emma Talbot (b. Stourbridge, UK, 1969) connects emotions and memories to myths, lines of poetry and current events. With her flowing drawing style, in which text, images and patterns combine in a natural way, she invites the viewer to follow her into a dreamlike world. And yet this work is packed with current pressing issues involving feminism, capitalism, technology and our interaction with nature.
Drawings form the basis of Talbot’s oeuvre. From small and intimate on handmade paper to vast animations on the illuminated signs of Piccadilly Circus, they depict subjects that move Talbot. The small bodies with faceless heads that play the leading role in her drawings are, according to Talbot, images of herself, as seen from the inside. Talbot draws in order to allow her subconscious, where countless impressions are stored, to speak. Unity of time, place and space are – just like in a dream – often illogical. She draws on family stories but also on classical myths, poems by T.S. Eliot and the work of feminist philosophers such as Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous. Each and every one of these can inspire surprising, amusing and touching scenes that combine to generate new stories. The images ‘touch each other’, mutually reinforcing their atmosphere, like the lines of a poem. They set a particular tone, which everyone can interpret in their own way without having to understand every detail.
Because of the role that Talbot assigns to the subconscious, she also seems, with her work, to be responding to the post-Enlightenment era in which we live. In a world where we want to control everything with our intellect and where everyone is connected to their own device, she is open to the transcendent and the irrational. We humans are part of a larger whole, Talbot appears to be saying, a vast history and space. Everything, both energetic and menacing, flows seamlessly together. In her installations, she appears to present this connection – over which we, as human beings, have no control – in visual form.
In recent years, Talbot’s...
