Sarah Hardacre 

Printmaker

Manchester

 

 

Sarah Hardacre’s works present collage and screen prints that feature backdrops of Salford tower blocks against the sensual curves of cut-outs from vintage magazines. Her practice is fuelled by 20th century social history interests, her fascination with the utopian ideologies of Modernism, working class social movements, sexuality and social policy and draws on considerations of recycling and reproductiveness in print ephemera.

The women presented in Sarah’s prints draw strength from fragilities and bring promise for change on a grander scale. Their natural curves and sexuality against the brutalilst concrete represent a stance against the male dominated environment, technology and politics. Just as the images of Salford’s post industrial landscape can be read as nostalgic of a lost era of optimism, her scantily clad women wistfully hark back to a time before fake tan, manicured body hair and plastic surgery; a time when erotic images were much closer to the reality of women’s bodies.

As a woman in the traditionally male dominated world of printmaking, Hardacre is able to draw upon age old ideas of social utopia and sexual revolution. Her works introduce women as empowering forces, spiritual feminising and emancipated from the mass produced world around her. In some way signifying the feminine identity of the artist, these images of women represent a retreat into fantasy; a safety valve for competence in the real world.

 

Web: www.the-printroom.co.uk 

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