‘What is life? A container for magic. A conductor for nameless frissons and frictions. Electricities and energies that sustain endless expansion.’ Emma Talbot’s poetic musing sets the tone for Everything Is Energy, a show that radiates with the vitality its title promises.
Across silk paintings, intimate drawings, sculptural ‘intangible things’ and animation, Talbot builds an ecosystem of ideas concerned with how we live in the world today, and what our choices mean for the future.
Climate anxiety, technological overreach, myth, memory and the cycles of life and death are woven throughout, held together by Talbot’s distinctive combination of text, colour and fluid imagery.
Two monumental silk works form the heart of the exhibition: ‘Everything Is Energy’ and ‘Are You a Living Thing That Is Dying or a Dying Thing That Is Living?’
Stepping into the first gallery, the latter immediately asserts itself. The tapestry unfurls like a living organism, its cosmic scenery full of drifting bodies, plant forms and hand-painted poetic phrases that gently guide the viewer: ‘whether you like it or not, your nails grow’, ‘you give birth to yourself over and over’.
These snippets don’t annotate the imagery so much as pulse through it, underscoring Talbot’s interest in the inevitability of growth, ageing and renewal.
Talbot draws widely from folklore, ancient cosmologies and speculative futurism, often folding these influences together within a single piece. ‘Generative Plant 2025’, a textile work reminiscent of a many-limbed deity, brings spirituality to the fore, while ‘Everything Is Energy: Ancient Spirits’ uses line and colour to evoke the invisible flows that connect all living things.
Smaller works like ‘Sheelanagig’ highlight the divine feminine that courses through the exhibition; the unclothed female figures that appear across her practice serve as embodiments of resilience, intuition and connection to the natural world.
Talbot’s own words appear throughout the show, often centring on the idea that life is an accumulation of actions, each creating ripples we may never fully see. In an era increasingly driven by artificial intelligence, digital immersion and ecological instability, this emphasis on interconnectedness feels both grounding and gently political.
Talbot never preaches; instead, she nudges viewers towards reflection, offering an alternative mode of attention that feels slower, more porous, more attuned.
The emotional crescendo arrives upstairs, where the large-scale Everything Is Energy surrounds the room. As you walk, the silk shifts with the faintest breeze, creating ripples that echo the currents the work meditates on.
Its imagery blends hope and unease – landscapes tipping into collapse, figures navigating uncertain terrain, flashes of cosmic possibility. Talbot holds these tensions lightly, suggesting that awareness and imagination may be antidotes to despair.
Across drawing, sculpture, textiles and animation, Talbot’s technical command is matched by a rich imaginative reach. The exhibition is thoughtfully paced and undeniably immersive, inviting visitors to move slowly, let the works breathe, and consider their own place within the vast web of relationships the artist maps out.
Everything Is Energy is, at its core, a reminder of the quiet magic embedded in simply being alive – and the responsibility that comes with recognising our part in the wider, ever-moving system that holds us.
It is a show worth lingering in, and one that leaves you subtly recharged.
