21ST CENTURY HERBAL
2023.4.3-2023.6.11
Artist: emma talbot
curator: wells fray-smith
This exhibition brings together paintings on silk, three-dimensional forms, animations and drawings made in the last three years that reflect on the power of the natural world and experiences of living in flux and transformation. Emma Talbot makes work that is about processing what it means to be alive, to think, to feel, and to notice the world in which we live. Her work is rooted in personal experience and fact, but often presents alternate realities or suggests ways to live differently.
Emma Talbot, 21st Century Herbal, 2022, Acrylic on silk, Overall dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist
Emma Talbot, 21st Century Herbal, 2022, Acrylic on silk, Overall dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist
The central work in the exhibition, 21st Century Herbal, presents a figure experiencing the effects of eleven plants on her body while written text explains the magical or medicinal properties of those plants, and how they may help or harm us. Rosemary slows Alzheimers and dementia, while stinkweed is a toxic plant that produces amnesia and confusion. Across fourteen panels, Talbot takes us on a journey through nature of discovery full of truth, wisdom and hope, revealing that humans and the natural world are deeply connected and plants may be the key to our survival.
Talbot is a storyteller with a distinctive painterly language that combines colourful, swirling lines and patterns, direct text, and a female figure who explores and navigates imagined landscapes and worlds. The figure in Talbot’s work faceless, acting as both an avatar of Talbot and a surrogate for ourselves. The imagery in Talbot’s work is direct and hand-drawn on silk, relating to her inner landscape of personal thought and emotional responses to subjects ranging from technological advancement and grief, to nature and aging.
The central work in the exhibition, 21st Century Herbal, presents a figure experiencing the effects of eleven plants on her body while written text explains the magical or medicinal properties of those plants, and how they may help or harm us. Rosemary slows Alzheimers and dementia, while stinkweed is a toxic plant that produces amnesia and confusion. Across fourteen panels, Talbot takes us on a journey through nature of discovery full of truth, wisdom and hope, revealing that humans and the natural world are deeply connected and plants may be the key to our survival.
Emma Talbot, 21st Century Herbal, 2022, Acrylic on silk, Overall dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist
Emma Talbot, Floral hangings, 2022, Acrylic on silk, Overall dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist
Emma Talbot, 21st Century Herbal, 2022, Acrylic on silk, Overall dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist
EMMA TALBOT
Artist
Emma Talbot (b. 1969, Stourbridge) lives and works in London. She studied at the Birmingham Institute of Art & Design and Royal College of Art. Working in drawing, painting, animation and sculpture Talbot often articulates internal narratives as visual poems or associative rumination, based on her own experience, memories and psychological projections. Incorporating her own writing and references toother literary and poetic sources, Talbot’s work considers complex issues such as feminist theory andstorytelling; ecopolitics and the natural world; and pertinent questions regarding our shifting relationshipsto technology, language and communication.
Wells Fray-Smith
Curator
Wells Fray-Smith is Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. Prior to Barbican, Wells held similar positions at Whitechapel Gallery, Pace Gallery, London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.At Whitechapel Gallery, she was the co-curator of Emma Talbot’s Max Mara Art Prize for Women winning exhibitionThe Age/ L’Età and was also the curator ofThe London Open(2022) and Helen Cammock: Che si puófare (2019). She was the curator of Real Life at Galerie Sofie Van de Velde in Antwerp, Belgium, for which she also wrote the catalogue. Wells writes extensively on modern and contemporary art, recently contributing catalogue essays on the artists Tess Jaray (2022), Secundino Hernandez (2022), Prabhavthi Meppayil (2022) and Fabienne Verdier (2020).