Sarah Hardacre’s collages appropriate photographs of Salford tower blocks and images cut from second hand pornographic magazines. While the subject matter of these works is, in the main, the voluptuous landscape of the female body overlaying the phallic like uprising of the modern, concrete inner city skyline—these pieces are far from being a feminist critique. Rather, they can be viewed as a biographical fetishism of the artist, a juxtaposition of the dehumanizing elements of the architectural surroundings of her home with the very human act of physical sensuality and eroticism. The themes emerging from Hardacre’s collages explore various systems of control, on a local level, in the geography of the urban built environment, and on a more universal level—in the psychology of power relationships within sexuality. Drawing on the utopian ideologies of modernist architecture, the tower block backgrounds reference the social engineering of urban regeneration and housing redevelopment schemes and the effects of such projects in constructing how public and private spaces are occupied and used. Contrastingly, the sexual and erotic content seeks to investigate a strictly individualized world of control, of fetish and fantasy, desire and deviancy, submission and domination.

Hardacre has shown her collaged compositions in a number of solo and group exhibitions worldwide including the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, Dublin, Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien, Berlin, Galeie für Fotografie, Berlin, and Paul Stolper, London. She has participated in a number of residencies including Galeie für Fotografie, Berlin and The Herabarium & Botany Department, Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester. 

Courtesy of Paul Stolper