Xanthe Lardner-Burke

Artist Catalogue

Virtual Exhibition

And The Heart Wants What It Wants

My work is about wanting, pink and love.

I was interested in the making and consumption of love material mediated through technology. I was influenced by romantic language – to melt, to be half of a whole, destiny, lovemaking – and romantic imagery such as the kiss, the love song, the relationship TikTok, romantic self-help articles and quizzes, and the colour pink. Overwhelmingly it is love material marketed to girls, that we associate pink with romance and girlhood.

I have worked in assemblage to produce this body of work, entangling sensory and non-sensory source material, taking pleasure in a studio practice that is playful and led by material experimentation. Using materials that are sticky and sweet and appeal to the orifices of the body –often consumable – I work in the tension between preservation and stability. I have used foodcolouring, vanilla essence, icing sugar, glucose, rice paper, drafting film, scrim, polyester satin,bleach, wax, resin and tissue paper.

At the beginning of the year, I felt a loss of seeing and feeling things in delight. I wanted to want, and I wanted to love. I wanted to find pink: shimmering, erotic, bright, pleasure-full, excessive, the stuff of romance and wanting.

I didn't mean to break your heart (I didn't mean to break your heart) I'm so so so sorry, I'm so so so sorry I didn't mean to break you

B-b-b-b-break it, babyLook, baby

I'm a heartbreaker I'm a heartbreaker

The cultural production of love sets up a binary of love composed of self and other. The ‘other’ is some other body, an object of desire.

You’re da one that I dream about all day-ay-ay

You are displaced and othered, and you look to resonate, to reverb within a place, your place. You want to be big and you want to be romantic. You want to love and you want to be loved.

And The Heart Wants What It Wants

In turning myself out to seek pink within my disillusionment – to seek out and seek through love material – I wanted to be the object of my own desire. I desired the other within me, destined to be forever pink.

I'm a heartbreaker You're a heartbreaker You're a heart I-I-I-I'm a... (A heart)I-I-I-I'm a...