Emma Hart: BIG MOUTH

Barakat Contemporary presents BIG MOUTH, a solo exhibition by British artist Emma Hart  (b. 1974), from November 24 (Wed), 2021 to January 23(Sun), 2022. This is the first solo  exhibition in Korea by Hart, a winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women (2016). Bringing together a series of new large-scale ceramic sculptural works, Hart irreverentlyexplores the pressures of being an artist from a working class background, who as she puts it “operates in the middle class artworld.” 

For BIG MOUTH Emma Hart uses her ceramic sculptures to perform, play out and question the power dynamics that structure a class-based society. Hart probes how our social background is transmitted through verbal signals and physical gestures, especially speech. Going beyond making vessels or pots, Hart’s risky approach to working with ceramics pushes the technical limits of clay,  setting it to make ‘situations’ in which the viewer finds themselves centre stage. Starting with the idea of manipulating ‘signs’ such as pointing fingers, speech bubbles and targets,  Hart produces imposing sculptures that tell you where to look, where to go and forcibly put words into your mouth that may not form part of your own vocabulary. Rather than generate meaning, Hart’s work generates experience, and suggests that maybe Hart’s feelings, doubts, and anxieties aren’t that far away from your own.

Emma Hart lives and works in London. In 2017 she won the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery. In 2015 she was awarded a Paul Hamlyn Foundation award for Visual Art. In 2022, Hart will realise her first permanent sculpture for the public entrance of the UCL East, Pool Street West building, on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

We cordially invite you to explore Emma Hart’s first solo exhibition in Korea.