Emma Hunter
Born: Liverpool, England (raised Edinburgh, Scotland)
Lives: London, England
No Superhuman Here, 2024
Oil Pastel on Photoprint
11cm x 16cm
Emma Hunter’s practice stems from the personal yet seeks to relate through the universal going back to the ancient. Hunter is principally a sculptor with works that abstracts but are bodily in nature and aim to forge a visceral encounter of psychological states/ related motions. Since birthing, Hunter has started creating prints and drawings that act somewhat as exposer tools to uncover unconscious matter related to difficult aspects of lived experience/being human. At the same time there is awareness of the wider socio-economic and political context which feed into the work. Currently, Hunter is concerned with exploring experiences of matrescence, feminism, the domestic, violence and coercion. There is often a sense of allure and danger, the precarious. The contradiction within forms and the power of combining materials or balancing states is not foregone but an important part of the finished work. Works on paper like those in 3D embody emotion and movement through mark making and subject.
No Superhero Here captures a moment when a family member insisted that the artist smile for the camera while suffering from postpartum psychosis. A major contributing factor to the onset of this horrendous illness was a somewhat ‘superhuman’ feeding regime charted by a midwife to breast/best feed her twins on a 3 hourly cycle – expressing, bottle feeding expressed milk, hospital delivery of milk/ NG feed with only 1 hour free between, running 24/7. At what cost is the essential work when mother’s health is in decline? Who cares for those labouring? Well Mum, well baby?