Annika Harding

Disturbances series, exhibited in Flux and Fog: Landscapes of the Atherton Tablelands, solo exhibition, NorthSite Contemporary Arts, Gimuy/Cairns, 12 April - 1 June 2024

Selected works from Flux and Fog: Landscapes of the Atherton Tablelands, solo exhibition, NorthSite Contemporary Arts, Gimuy/Cairns, 12 April - 1 June 2024

Installation images from Flux and Fog: Landscapes of the Atherton Tablelands, solo exhibition, NorthSite Contemporary Arts, Gimuy/Cairns, 12 April - 1 June 2024

M16 Artspace, Canberra, 13-30 June 2019

Elegy for Winter was a curated exhibition featuring artists’ responses to winter landscapes in a changing climate. Artists Luke Aleksandrow, Jacqueline Bradley, Chris Carmody, Denise Ferris, Annika Harding, Ellis Hutch, and Saskia Haalebos (fka Shags) reflect on past experiences in the Snowy Mountains, New Zealand and the northern hemisphere.

Elegy for Winter laments the loss and entropy of winter landscapes as they melt and change at an alarming rate, but it also revels in snow and ice and places a hopeful emphasis on renewal. Many of the previously unshown works in this exhibition were made or begun in response to artist residencies and travels. These works stand alone, not quite at the core of these artists’ artistic practices, but responding with urgency to situation and phenomena.

List of works:

Luke Aleksandrow, Break Quartet, 2016, video, 5:58

Chris Carmody, Glacier 1-4, 2017, 14.5cm x 19.5cm, acrylic on melamine

Annika Harding, Ida, Richie and Ellis walking ‘Up and Under (Yltä ja Alta)’ by Nancy Holt, 15 January 2016, 2019, acrylic on board, 20 x 25cm each

Chris Carmody, Glacier 5, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 14.5 x 22.5cm

Chris Carmody, Glacier 6, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 15.8 x 22.5cm

Jacqueline Bradley, Summer Coat, Winter Coat, 2019, Wool, cotton, steel, timber, dimensions variable

Ellis Hutch, Surface depth #1, Parilanjärvi, 2019, inkjet print on Ilford Pearl paper, 42 x 59 cm

Ellis Hutch, Surface depth #2, Parilanjärvi, 2019, inkjet print on Ilford Pearl paper, 42 x 59 cm

Ellis Hutch, Surface depth #3, Parilanjärvi, 2019, inkjet print on Ilford Pearl paper, 42 x 59 cm

Ellis Hutch, Lake polish, Parilanjärvi, January 2016, digitial video

Ellis Hutch, Black ice #1, Parilanjärvi, 2019, inkjet print on Ilford Pearl paper, 59 x 42 cm

Ellis Hutch, Black ice #2, Parilanjärvi, 2019, inkjet print on Ilford Pearl paper, 59 x 42 cm

Ellis Hutch, Black ice #3, Parilanjärvi, 2019, inkjet print on Ilford Pearl paper, 59 x 42 cm

Saskia Haalebos, The Great Vanishing, 2019, house paint and reflectors on timber, 270 x 851.4 x 1.1cm

Denise Ferris, Untitled (1-4), inkjet on paper, 75 x 100cm

Annika Harding, Ida, Richie and Ellis walking ‘Up and Under (Yltä ja Alta)’ by Nancy Holt, 15 January 2016, 2019, acrylic on board, 20cm x 25cm each

Exhibited in Elegy for Winter group exhibition curated by Annika Harding.

Wayfinding
Solo exhibition
CCAS Manuka, Canberra
31 May - 10 June 2018
www.ccas.com.au

Wayfinding series, 2018 (Haukijärvi 1-9, acrylic on birch; and Aranda Bushland 1-6, acrylic on yellow box) approx 11cm diameter each

Wayfinding studies, 2018 watercolour, gouache and pencil on paper, 20cm x 20cm each

Wayfinding is a solo exhibition by Annika Harding featuring paintings that bridge her experiences of two very different landscapes, in Canberra and Finland. Following on from an artist residency at Arteles Creative Centre in Finland in 2016, Annika has continued to explore her practice of connecting to the landscape by walking through nearby forests regularly. In this exhibition, she investigates the use of rope trail markers in the Finnish forest, and how this method of wayfinding translates to her local bushland when creating new temporary trails for herself. Annika’s paintings on timber (birch representing the Finnish forest, and yellow box the local landscape) and works on paper show how the artist residency experience has informed her ongoing art practice, and her engagement with landscapes of different personal and cultural significance. 

Annika acknowledges with great respect the traditional owners of the land she lives and works within - and the Canberra landscapes explored in this exhibition - the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. She would like to thank local business Andrew’s Lawn Mowing and Ground Maintenance for sourcing the salvaged timber she has used in this exhibition, as well as Simon Ramsey at ANU School of Art & Design for cutting and sanding the timber rounds. 

Lines of Site: Finding the Sublime in Canberra, curated by Grace Blakeley-Carroll, 17 August - 3 September 2017, M16 Artspace

Jacqueline Bradley, Cathy Franzi, Annika Harding, Mark Mohell, Kirstie Rea, Caren Florance & Melinda Smith

A body of work shown in In the Landscape joint exhibition with Amy Dunn, Photoaccess, Canberra, 8 September - 2 October 2016

Catalogue via the Photoaccess website.

The way that I walked through the landscape (afternoon walk, Black Mountain), 2016, 46cm x 61cm

Something that I touched in the landscape (morning walk, Aranda), 2016, 46cm x 61cm

Something that looked at in the landscape (afternoon walk, Black Mountain), 2016, 46cm x 61cm

The way that I felt in the landscape (morning walk, Aranda), 2016, 46cm x 61cm

A thought that occurred to me in the landscape (morning walk, Aranda), 2016, 46cm x 61cm

Putting myself in the landscape (afternoon walk, Black Mountain), 2016, 46cm x 61cm

15 July - 20 August 2016

Canberra Contemporary Art Space 

Curated by Alexander Boynes. Featuring Daniel Bonson, GW Bot, David Buckland, Soren Dahlgaard, Jacky Green, Annika Harding, Timothy James Johnson and Andrew Styan. 

For further information and a link to the exhibition catalogue click here.

Shown in Damn, CCAS City 20 May - 27 June 2015

CCAS City

20 May - 27 June 2015

This photograph featuring a painted installation from my first solo exhibition Shortfall at ANCA Gallery in 2013 has since been included in the exhibition Der Wanderer, at the Museum of the Image (MOTI) in the Netherlands in 2014, and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Romania in 2015. Der Wanderer explores the legacy of Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) in contemporary art and popular culture. 

My first interstate solo exhibition, DAMNATION, opened at Sawtooth ARI in Launceston on the 3rd of October. You can download the catalogue and read more about it here. DAMNATION continues until the 25th of October. 

Sentinels, Tidbinbilla (1-10), Oil and beeswax on board, 20cm x 20cm each

Shown in Wanderlust, M16 Artspace

Collection of ACT Legislative Assembly

These paintings feature signposts and background landscapes from a walk at Tidbinbilla. I was interested in how the signs influence the experience of the landscape. A man-made object for a man-made route; but as they rust and become encrusted with bird droppings, they are absorbed into the landscape. When I made these works I was also reading and thinking a lot about set trails - how the walker accepts the interpretation of the landscape that the walk provides, and becomes wed to the directions given. There are limitations but also a sense of freedom in this.

Wanderlust, M16 Artspace, 19 June - 6 July 2014

Kate Barker, Hannah Bath, Alexander Boynes, Chris Carmody, Amy Dunn, Shellaine Godbold, Annika Harding, Elena Papanikolakis, Jacklyn Peters, Fiona Veikkanen, Jonathan Webster.

Curated by Annika Harding, who was awarded an ACT Arts Award by the Canberra Critics Circle for this exhibition. 

Wanderlust brings together eleven emerging and early career artists from Canberra who each engages with the act of ‘walking’. Walking being an interaction where the mind, body and environment align. Many of the artists in this exhibition use walking as an inspiration, and investigate their own personal experiences in their work. Some make observations about walkers or the act of walking itself, as a social, environmental and political activity. Across painting, drawing, and less traditional media, these artists explore this everyday activity.

Shellaine Godbold, Elena Papanikolakis and Jonathan Webster all make paintings and drawings which take walking as their inspiration. The act of moving through space is made visible in abstract and sometimes more representational ways, but is always very personal. Similarly, Fiona Veikkanen and Jacklyn Peters have used walking around their suburban neighbourhoods as a starting point for surprising works based on feelings and observations about these familiar routes.

Chris Carmody and Annika Harding both explore how walkers are directed to move through space. Carmody is interested in keep clear signs and painted in the streets, and how walkers respond to these, while Harding investigates how signposted directions influence and frame bushwalkers' experience of landscapes.

Hannah Bath and Amy Dunn step back and observe walkers. While Bath's drawings remove the beautifully detailed walkers from their environment, Dunn's shadowy figures move through a mysterious and haunting landscape of light and dark.

For Alexander Boynes and Kate Barker, the movement of the individual speaks volumes about larger social groups. Boynes' works explore diaspora and migration, figures unravelling and reforming as they move through space. Barker explores marching, an activity with a long tradition which disciplines individuals' movements to become unnaturally in unison.

Photos by Julia Boyd