Emma Hart (artist)


Emma Hart is an English artist who works in a number of disciplines, including video art, installation art, sculpture, and film. She lives and works in London, where she is a lecturer at Slade School of Art.
In 2016, she was the winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women; she is also a recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Visual Arts Award.

Early life and education

Hart studied Fine Art at Slade School of Fine Art, graduating with an MA in 2004, and completed a PhD in Fine Art in 2013 from Kingston University.

Career

Hart's art has been exhibited both in traditional gallery spaces and unconventional spaces such as "a semi-derelict flat above an abandoned frame-maker's shop" in Folkestone, as part of the 2014 Folkestone Triennial. Her artwork addresses questions of social class, familial behavior, and the connections between relatives. Hart's initial training was in photography, but she has gradually focused more and more on sculptures using ceramics. She has also evoked her own life in her art: Dirty Looks, a 2013 exhibit at London's Camden Arts Centre, incorporated references to a job she once had working at a call center.
Upon winning the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2016, Hart embarked on a six-month-long residency in Italy, which was her first time spending more than three weeks outside of London. While in Italy, she studied the ceramic technique known as maiolica, which in turn influenced Mamma Mia!, which was installed at London's Whitechapel Gallery and at Collezione Maramotti in Emilia-Romagna, Italy.
A book accompanying her exhibit Banger at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh included a short story by experimental fiction writer Ali Smith.