> Emma Hack featured in The Observer – 29 September 2011
Press
11 September 2025 - Emma Hack featured in The Observer (The Observer)
Click here to download Observer, New Review 25.09.11.pdf
'I am a canvas': how artists are reinventing body painting. The ancient art is being revisited by contemporary artists. An extract, featuring Emma Hack By Tom Lamont, writing in The Observer, Sunday 25 September 2011
...Using the human body as a canvas, agrees 38-year-old Australian artist Emma Hack, "is not for the fainthearted". Though Bolin is not due to be exhibited in the UK in the immediate future, Hack makes gorgeous, camouflaging "skin illustrations". Whereas Bolin puts his own body up for painting, Hack employs models, tasking them to stand still for between eight and 15 hours while she covers them in intricate patterns. "I trained as a make-up artist," she explains, "so painting on skin is second nature to me. It's a difficult process, but rewarding."
Hack, a former children's face painter, and one-time winner of the Professional World Body Painting Championships, was inspired to produce her new collection by a longstanding love for the wallpaper patterns of the Australian interior designer Florence Broadhurst. Hack chooses a model she thinks will fit with one of Broadhurst's bright designs, strips them bare and gets painting. "There are 540 patterns in Broadhurst's archive, so I've only scratched the surface in my work so far."