COMPANION | ANNABEL ELGAR

When the view from the window is less interesting than what happens inside the room: this reversal—both photographic and otherwise—seems to be Annabel Elgar’s stylistic hallmark. A photographer by definition, but with a multidisciplinary practice, she incorporates sculpture, painting, and embroidery into her works, where they take center stage or play supporting roles. Elgar’s work is the result of meticulous research into places and objects, which she does not hesitate to create herself in order to compose the final scene—artworks within the artwork. Fairytale-like forests populated by puppets with unsettling faces, unicorns sculpted from laundry soap, or, as in the case of Companion (5), an ethereal unicorn crafted from a golden mane.

Annabel Elgar’s photographs appear at first to tell comforting stories: the domestic setting, an ordinary detail like a curtain made of blue and white checked fabric… But a keen and curious eye soon uncovers details that are, at the very least, unusual—if not unsettling. A garden tool that could be a potential weapon, a cactus whose golden spines make it inherently unwelcoming, elements that make us wonder where the scene is set and what direction our thoughts should take. Yet for Elgar, there is never just one version of the story; (supposed) truth and fiction are layered together in an ironic and sophisticated way. The ‘puppets’ she crafts are Companions—friends, partners, allies—but should they be trusted?

The human figure that seems to have created or might inhabit Elgar’s spaces remains in the background, suggested only by traces of a presence that never fully reveals itself—almost as if it has just stepped out of the scene, leaving us with the feeling that we only just missed it…
There is an almost cinematic quality to these scenes: every detail is carefully composed, as though part of a story that—through allusions, symbols, references to art history and literature—can be rewritten over and over, always with a new, entirely plausible ending, in an ongoing play of vision and thought.

Annabel Elgar
Companion (5), 2012
C-type photographic print, 40 x 50 cm
Courtesy the artist

01/03/25