Vivarium
Episodes. In creating these worlds, Hardy fuses his imagination, personal memories and true events into ‘purposeful fiction’. For each Episode, he meticulously designs, builds and photographs a new world in his studio, taking three to four months to complete a work. His photomontages are shown full-size – at one-to-one ratio – in a light box with a window frame, resulting in hyper-realistic artworks that create a direct encounter between the viewer and the subject.
As Hardy places one or more characters in carefully arranged settings, he fuses ambivalent, melancholic scenes of private public moments with social issues such as conspiracy thinking, ethnic profiling and modern working conditions. By addressing a different topic in each Episode but applying a consistent approach, ‘Vivarium’ forms an expanding multiverse of portals in which life takes place.
