Marie Harnett Were you dreaming?

“I always like there to be a bit of mystery and almost a questioning about what’s going to happen, and what has happened, and what the moment is depicting.”

Were you dreaming? explores new staging and a fresh cast of characters in Marie Harnett’s work, all connected to pervading themes of loss, love, yearning and grief.

This soft-back publication includes intricate drawings by the artist featuring imagery selected from hundreds of film trailers. Films are a conduit for Harnett; having selected a frame that encapsulates a particular atmosphere, she begins to fragment each scene, layering it with references to mythology or art history, and in some instances overlapping images from different sources.

Harnett depicts a snippet of a story, a woman framed in a window, a coin held between her fingers; a hand on a collar; a glance between a couple; a young woman eating; and a broken statue. The imagined scenes are ambiguous and evocative, inviting interpretation from the viewer.

An interview with Harnett explores this ambiguity, as well as the influence of photography, Old Masters and sculpture on her drawings, why she draws on drafting film and how she selects the titles of her works, including why a Greek myth inspired the title, Were you dreaming?