Tim Hardy, Lure, 2024, Archival print on Dibond, coated maple backing, custom oak frame, 47 x 57 cm

“Hardy’s images imbibe a circular logic. They contain narrative clues to nowhere in particular and, with their peculiar specificity, allow the mind to concoct possible scenes and dramas. The black and white composite images invoke surrealist juxtaposition drowsy with symbolism that refuses to attach itself; a clock in pieces, a bunch of feathers, a dressing room mirror. They stretch horizontally with a filmic condensing of time and the implied progression of narrative.” ~ Extract from Pip Wallis’s exhibition essay.

Tim Hardy (b. 1999, Canberra, Australia) is an artist interested in visual seduction and artifice. Working across photography and video, Hardy manufactures and documents various ‘situations’. These formal compositions blur the line between commercial and fine-art image dispositions and function as isolated scenes from a larger narrative left unsaid. Through the careful staging of chosen subjects and environments, Hardy re-examines the underlying psychological tensions beneath everyday objects and scenes, such as commercial advertorial photography, group dynamics, mistakes and repetitions, athleticism and performance. By subjecting the familiar to subtle acts of perversion, Hardy draws the eye towards moments of overlooked beauty, tension or depravity.

Opening event: Saturday 7 December, 5pm