Anne Hardy - Solar Tank

Survival Spell at Maureen Paley

I have a comment and a question.

This exhibition seems to propose itself as a propositional answer to a question, like: “How can you condense a Texas Land Art residency into a space the size of the Maureen Paley?”

Of course, if anyone can, Anne Hardy can. I know her mostly for her evocative post-digital landscapes, a similarity with Heather Philipson, which I first encountered in Manchester at British Art Show 9. These works are like big dreamy set-stages, for example Liquid Landscape (2018) has the sounds of the sea while the lights dim and fade with the waves; the whole ‘scene’ resets after about ten minutes, revealing the illusion. The ‘beach’ is made from shells, but also parts of fans and pewter-cast NOS canisters.

Anne Hardy, Liquid Landscape (2018) The Whitworth, Manchester, British Art Show 9

Second, a comment, possibly as an answer - this vitrine, which is not a vitrine, is great. To me, it avoids the closed-ness of a true ‘vitrine’ through its complexity. The ‘background’ evokes a landscape through mark-making. A halo of wire, surrounding a lit lightbulb, evokes drawing, tumbleweed, things getting wrapped around axles. A small bundle of sticks, suspended, points to a process which is literally suspended. A coil of wire breaks the ‘screen’ poking through from below, drawing us in and making us more than a viewer. This ‘screen,’ between us and the ‘landscape’ is open on the sides, presenting a moment not vitrified, but with the air rushing in, and thus it is sort of ‘leaking,’ to the extent of an open window or draught. The light looks like the sun. In these abstract and minimal forms, various objects instead suggest themselves; windscreen wipers, a stray hair, the car aerial.

Solar Tank

Survival Spell - Maureen Paley

Energy Locator

Survival Spell - Maureen Paley

I think what Hardy has achieved here is like a tableau of different moments, which took place at different speeds, happening simultaneously in front of us. The vast shifting sands, the relentless beating of the sun, the wires and tumbleweed, the repetitous motions of the car coupled with its relentless progress forwards; sudden moments like a twig, or a spring, or a doink, are played out simultaneously. It has a truly meditative quality - I word I feel is overused when what is meant is ‘reflective’ or ‘stationary’. What meditation means is to do less than one normally does, drop back, and notice the simultaneous now-ness and the changing nature of every sensation, which we know as ‘things.’ That is, as your eyes move around Solar Tank, there again is the doink of that time the spring popped out of the dash - is it happening again, or a memory, a tiny trauma? Or maybe, did it only happen the once, in 500-miles of driving, but here has an equivalence with the entire mark-made landscape? And anyway I’ve imagined it, and someone else is very likely to see something totally different - that’s the strength of the work. And all the while the ‘sun’ beats down, and me and my companion stand mumbling to each other like we’re sitting looking out the front window of the bus, making the landscape with our eyes.

It reminds me simultaneously of John Latham’s quasi-didactic Time-base Roller (1972) and Emma Hart’s road signs (2022) from Banger and Strange Clay, particularly the way the fingers of the passenger in Green Light protrude beyond the ‘screen.’ The fact of its reliance on the wall through actually works in Solar Tank’s favour, making it just image-y and provisional enough to not be a confrontation.

“The new monuments are made of artificial materials, plastic, chrome, and electric light. They are not built for the ages, but rather against the ages. They are involved in a systematic reduction of time down to fractions of seconds, rather than in representing the long spaces of centuries” Robert Morris writes in Entropy and the New Monuments. This sense of liveness is present in Solar Tank, nevertheless, as well as what is objective, abstract and literal, to me it is equally relatable, romantic, and involved with yawningly long time spans.