Emma Talbot: Everything is Energy — Silk, Storytelling and the Charge of Being Alive

Stepping into Arnolfini’s autumn exhibition Everything is Energy (on now until 8 February 2026) feels like entering the inside of a thought — one that shimmers, spirals and refuses to settle. British artist Emma Talbot transforms the galleries into an immersive silk world where drawing, painting, sculpture and animation drift together like invisible currents. Her practice has always hovered between the intimate and the epic, but here an electric urgency amplifies every surface and gesture.

Are You a Living Thing That Is Dying or a Dying Thing That Is Living?, 2024 by Emma Talbot Courtesy and copyright Emma Talbot Studio.

Two monumental silk installations, co-commissioned with Copenhagen Contemporary, anchor the exhibition. Everything is Energy and Are You a Living Thing That Is Dying or a Dying Thing That Is Living? hang like illuminated scrolls, inviting visitors to wander among them as though inside a living tapestry or a story unfolding in mid-air. Their jewel-toned surfaces are threaded with Talbot’s handwritten questions — “What is life?”; “Are you the dreamer or the illusion?” — encouraging viewers to linger, loop back and create their own drifting, non-linear paths through the work...

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Image Credits:

Lead: Are You a Living Thing That Is Dying or a Dying Thing That Is Living? (Detail), 2024 by Emma Talbot Courtesy and copyright Emma Talbot Studio.

All further images as credited in photo captions.