Artist Anne Hardy’s solo exhibition, Feelings, leaves behind a quiet, lingering resonant energy. Staged in the grand surroundings of the University of Edinburgh’s Georgian gallery space.
This is a hall whose neoclassical architecture once echoed with the exhibits of a natural history museum. Hardy transformed the Talbot Rice Gallery into a sentient, living environment that blurred the boundaries between the organic, the mechanical and the supernatural.
Crossing the threshold into the paved central space, visitors were met by Being (Warrior) and Being (Guardian). Part totem, part post-human relic, these ambiguous sculptural figures felt less like inanimate objects and more like sentinels guarding the entrance to a newly uncoiled world. Constructed from an extraordinary alchemical mix of materials (cast pewter, welded steel, artist’s clothes, ceramic, moped casing, and crumpled copies of the New York Times), they challenged traditional figure sculpture. Rather than capturing a frozen moment of movement, they held the quiet, watchful tension of something temporarily still, questioning, waiting for us to respond.
What made Feelings so remarkable was its living, atmospheric quality. The installation was illuminated by flickering light sculptures connected via custom DMX dimmable LEDs to a real-time computer system. This system translated live meteorological weather data from Marfa, Texas, where Hardy began this body of work during her residency at the Chinati Foundation, into dynamic shifts of indoor luminescence.
As light pulsed through the high-arched gallery, syncing with a six-and-a-half-minute quadraphonic audio loop of synthetic tones, bird calls, hums, rain, and airborne signals, the space breathed. It felt as though a distant desert climate were grafting itself onto Edinburgh’s stone architecture.
Throughout the upper level of the walkraound gallery, smaller assemblages, including Wand (Empress Tree) and the series of Attitude sculptures, anchored this landscape of ‘organised chaos’.
Cast aluminium, volcanic rock, found debris, shoes, a mask, boots full of earth, and wild-cast bronze was interwoven with wires that resembled an intricate signal aerial or a speculative star map.
Hardy subtly tapped into our current anxieties regarding artificial intelligence, the decay of physical materials, and the future of our biological selves. Yet, rather than presenting a cold apocalyptic vision, the work hovered between something unsettling and something reverent, ritualistic and strangely protective.
Now that the lights have dimmed and the soundscape has faded, Feelings stands out as a significant moment in Edinburgh’s recent arts calendar.
By grafting future archaeology onto historical space, Hardy successfully reminded us that even in a digital, mechanised age, our instincts, environments, and physical bodies remain deeply, inextricably attuned to life.
