15 October – 6 December 2014
(Space closed Wednesday 10 – 13 December)
Show extended during week Wednesday 17 to Saturday 20 December
Wednesday – Saturday 11am-5pm
Preview: Wednesday 15 October 6-8.30pm
Richard Hards recently graduated from the Royal College of Art in Sculpture (MA) and has since been invited to make an intervention in Beaconsfield’s Upper Space Gallery.
Hards’ previous works are characterised by their direct and often combative response to found site or subject. Architectural intervention or excavation has more recently been augmented by a number of video works.
Can’t Act, 2014 is an ambitious video work featuring the Austrian actor Arno Frisch who played one of the psychopathic characters in Michael Haneke’s 1997 film Funny Games. Based in Berlin, Frisch was sought out by Hards, who then developed a directorial relationship with the actor, leading to the artist’s second film What kind of tone is that?, 2014.
As an undergraduate Hards engaged in an exercise of institutional critique in response to a real political situation, paradoxically upsetting the status quo whilst fulfilling his promise as a critically engaged young artist. Afterword, 2005, published in the industry journal Art Monthly, used advertising space paid for by a cohort of anonymous lecturers, technicians and students and became a public indictment of a widespread crisis in art education where erudition is sidelined by the demands of capital.
One eye is enough reflects Beaconsfield’s commissioning commitment to emergent artists.