"..Engaging with another central aspect of the classical language, Hardwick's work interrogates ideals of masculinity. Intrinsic to the ideal of the male body is physical prowess as embodied in the athletic body and the healthy body. Hardwick's sense of vulnerable masculinity is painfully located in the physicality of his own body. Suffering numerous surgical interventions, his body has been penetrated and 'broken into' in the name of healing only to leave him battered and scarred by the very instruments intended to bring health. The two light boxes depicting the artists body, evoke the clinical world of X-rays and invasive medicine, penetrating the boundaries of the body, cracking it asunder in the process, denying it wholeness.
Incomplete too are Hardwick's photographs of single isolated leaves made monumental and iconic. What appears to give these fragments of nature credence, confuses when the viewer realises that instead of perfection the large-scale prints open up to scrutiny every last broken vein and fissure of the leaves' surfaces. Presenting damage the leaves begin to evoke bruised, injured and curiously gendered bodies..."
Virginia MacKenny - Curator
|
e-mail 
