Keith Hardwick explores very intimate issues of human existence and interrelationships, played out in a familiar domestic environment. His use of lens-based media, in particular photography, is highly innovative and original, and he has taken part in a masterclass scheme with photographer Paul Brewer to develop his skills.
For his work in g39 he used a technique using water-filled vessels to create a ‘moving’ 2D montage of a living room, which could be seen from all angles around the work.
‘My work uses the domestic environment and myself as a locus from which to explore issues around human existence and interrelationships, and attitudes within such arenas as nudity, male sexuality and gender, and their social and psychological effects for the individual. What I think constitutes identity has something to do with performing myself as I fantasise myself to be, while I think this can be any fantasy, it must be fantasy that is believable to me, a kind of personal fiction. It is constrained therefore by what I perceive myself to be, but also what I believe it possibly for myself to be. This of course is a major constraint and is inflected by background, gender, class, experience, age etc.’
Hardwick uses imagery from his home for many reasons, in particular the shaping of oneself by the home, and the inevitable feeling of having lost part of that identity when moving house.
Keith has exhibited widely at home and abroad.