Patrick Heide Contemporary Art is pleased to present Under a White Sky, Alex Hamilton’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.
The exhibition features photocopy drawings mainly from the Australian artists’ new series ‘Arch’, one drawing from the older ‘Fourth Plinth’ series and some “Wave Drawings”.
Objects by Slade School graduate Steven Dickie will be shown alongside Hamilton’s works, the second of a series of gallery exhibitions, where a gallery artist is presented in combination with a compatible work or installation by a recent graduate from one of London’s prolific art schools.
Hamilton’s series “Arch”, a view from Trafalgar Square looking downhill towards Admirality Arch, derives from a photograph the artist took in 2003 during a period of civil disturbance when the sculpture central to the composition was boarded up to protect it against riots.
The original motif is subjected to Hamilton’s radical and complex drawing process, which makes it very difficult to retrace. The artist reworks the photocopied image by rubbing out parts, adding new forms and structures before re-photocopying and repeating the erasing and redrawing process. The results are unexpected compositional outcomes, images of unrest and disturbance, deconstruction and alienation.
Hamilton’s drawings move from dream to reality, from absurd to logical: by radically distorting the viewer's perception he demolishes predisposed ways of seeing to offer views into a reconditioned and unknown world.
A new tranquility after the storm, a fresh wind that draws the world in a new light.
Alex Hamilton was born in Adelaide (Australia) and has lived in London since 1996 and now divides his time between London and Melbourne. He has exhibited widely in the UK, Australia and the US and his work is part of several high profile collections such as the Saatchi Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, the Australian National Gallery, the Baltimore and Denver Museum of Contemporary Art.
Steven Dickie, will present two sculptural objects, ’The Prism’ and ‘The Hunt for the Unavoidable future’, a white, black and grey tone keyboard composed of 88 radios with aerials. Dickie's retro-futuristic sculptural inventions and sound experiments are the result of an intriguing and investigative mind informed by science, utopian literature, modernism, politics, experimental music and geometry.
During the opening evening Hamilton’s title giving new artist’s book ‘Under a White Sky’ will be launched.
Both artists will perform at the opening playing self-constructed musical instruments.