Emma Talbot: Everything is Energy

18 Oct 2025-8 Feb 2026

Overview

‘What is life. A container for magic. A conductor for nameless frissons & frictions. Electricities & energies that sustain endless expansion.’
– Emma Talbot

‘What is life?’ is just one of many gently probing questions addressed by British artist Emma Talbot (b.1969) in her solo exhibition Everything is Energy, in which the artist leads us through a rich eco-system of works – including silk painting installations, intimate drawings, sculptural forms (Talbot calls them ‘intangible things’) and animation – each exploring the complexity of our relationship with nature, technology and the world around us.

How we live in the world has long been a preoccupation of Talbot’s practice, which examines the role of humans within (and as the perpetrators of) the growing climate emergency amidst a changing geo-political landscape. These questions course in handwritten texts throughout two new monumental silk paintings; Everything is Energy and Are You a Living Thing That Is Dying or a Dying Thing That Is Living? which sit at the heart of the exhibition.

Steeped in folklore, mythology and futuristic technology, Talbot’s work draws audiences back and forth in time, exploring microcosmic movements between nocturnal and diurnal worlds, and embracing both ancient civilisations and a future dictated by science and data development. Building like a ball of energy over time, Talbot’s existential enquiries pull at the frayed edges of our consciousness, encircling both deeply personal concerns and universal anxieties that address how we live in the world today:

“There isn’t an action that doesn’t have some kind of impact on another thing, because that’s what we’re experiencing. Life is an accumulation of actions, and in that sense, energy moves through us. We’re full of energy in order to live… It’s a really good way of explaining and of thinking about what life is.”

In a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence and digital mediation, Talbot’s work offers a reminder of our fundamental connection to the natural world, and to one another. Everything is Energy invites us to slow down, question and to reconnect, harnessing the energy that flows throughout all living things, to ask us each ‘What can you gather before you retreat?’

Emma Talbot (born 1969, Stourbridge) lives and works in London. She studied at the Birmingham Institute of Art & Design and Royal College of Art. Working in drawing, painting, animation and sculpture Talbot often articulates internal narratives as visual poems or associative ruminations, based on her own experience, memories and psychological projections. Incorporating her own writing and references to other literary and poetic sources, Talbot’s work considers complex issues such as feminist theory and storytelling; ecopolitics and the natural world; and pertinent questions regarding our shifting relationships to technology, language and communication.

Talbot has been awarded the 2020 8th Max Mara Art Prize for Women, 2018 Bryan Robertson Trust Award, 1998 City of Rochester Award, 1995-6 Rome Scholarship, British School at Rome.

Her work has been included in Milk of Dreams at The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2022). Recent solo exhibitions include: A Journey You Take Alone, Kunsthalle Giessen (2023-2024), In The End The Beginning, Kesselhaus Kindl, Berlin (2023); The Human Experience, Kunsthall Stavenger (2023); 21st Century Herbal, Beiqiu Museum, Nanjing, China (2023); Spaceship Earth (Plant Your Seeds of Hope), Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam (2023); The Age/L’Età, Collezione Maramotti, Italy and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); Mirrored Landscape, Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam (2022); Let Poets Speak, Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam (2022); Meditations, Petra Rink Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany (2022); When Screens Break Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2020); Ghost Calls, DCA, Dundee (2020);Ghost Calls and Meditations Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel (2021); Sounders of The Depths, GEM Kunstmuseum, The Hague, Netherlands (2019-20); ArtNight 2019 commission: Your Own Authority, William Morris Gallery; 21st Century Sleepwalk,

Caustic Coastal and Salford Lad’s Club, Salford (2018); Woman-Snake-Bird, Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam (2018); Open Thoughts, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein (2017); The World Blown Apart, Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam 2017; Stained With Marks Of Love, Arcadia Missa, New York (2017).  In 2025, How We Learn to Love, Compton Verney, Warwickshire GB,  HUMAN/NATURE, EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens GR and Mother Earth, Centraal Museum Utrecht, NL.

Her work is held in the collections of Guerlain, Paris, British Council Collection, Arts Council Collection, City of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, David Roberts Collection, Saatchi Collection, University of the Arts London, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Fries Museum NL, Arnhem Museum NL, KRC Collection NL, AkzoNobel NL, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk DK and  Kunstmuseum Den Haag NL.