35,000 ft, 2002, thread on canvas,
14 x 22 inches

‘I’ve always thought of (my work) as art. I don’t have much interest in the crafts.’

Anna Hunt’s embroidered artworks are magnificent yet uncanny photographic renderings in thread, overworked into a highly detailed tapestry effect.

She has created a series of icons of Modernist architecture, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, the transformation of which, from concrete and steel via a photograph into thread on canvas, draws the viewer’s attention to their status as buildings seldom seen yet highly reproduced. This theme of subject matter mainly accessible by way of photographic reproduction continues throughout her work, in such diverse images as Sputnik and 17th century Dutch vanitas paintings.

The Modernist era remains an interest for Hunt, perhaps because of its associations with masculinity, speed, increasing industrialization and technological innovation, while the use of the photograph plays an essential role in this work, making it much more highly conceptualized than a mere juxtaposition of the masculine and feminine. Hunt’s considered handiwork may be seen as an attempt to restore the ‘aura’ that has been lost in photographic reproduction, to re-create a distinctive, covetable art object in a world where we are inundated with disposable images.