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Ann Hamilton (born 1956, Lima, Ohio) is a visual artist known for her large-scale multimedia installations. After receiving her BFA in textile design from the University of Kansas in 1979, she lived in Banff and Montreal, Canada before deciding to pursue and MFA in sculpture at Yale in 1983.[1]From 1985 to 1991, she taught on the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Since 2001, Hamilton has served on the faculty of The Ohio State University where she is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Art.[2]

Themes and inspiration

Though Hamilton studied textile design throughout her undergraduate career, she pointedly decided to focus on sculpture instead of weaving as a concentration in graduate school. She claims that, when making that decision, she was “interested in the relationships between things in space. And more important than the things themselves is the way they come into relation.”[3] While in Canada, and while teaching at UC Santa Barbara, Hamilton began connecting her experience with textiles to photography and performance, creating an interdisciplinary artistic dialogue that is evident in her work, which often "weaves" different elements together into one image or includes textiles like pressed shirts or work uniforms.[4]

In addition to her educational background, her personal identity and interests directly inform her artistic creation. She identifies herself as a reader: of space, of objects[3], of literary criticism, of poetry, and even of dictionaries; thus, the act of reading, words, and books often make their way into her installations, videos, and created objects.[1] Her work also explores themes of humanity, from gender and the body to suffering and power.[5] As a Conceptual artist working with video, sound, and interactive installation, the elements of time[6], change, and decay also play roles in her work. Hamilton's installations are meant to be experienced with all the senses, often incorporating elements like sound and smell that urge the viewer to engage and connect with the work on a multi-sensory level. Her work also often responds to the spaces and cities in which they are created, using objects that reflect the history and identity of the culture.[4]

Select works

1984-1990

suitably positioned

One of Hamilton’s first installations, suitably positioned, 1984, set the tone for her later works, encompassing many of her artistic methods: installation, object-making, photography, and performance.[3] For this piece, she constructed a suit made of a thrift-store men’s suit and toothpicks. She then stood, wearing the suit, for the duration of the installation within the studio with viewers walking around the artist without interacting with her. The suit was originally made as a part of the work room in search of a position, which, after exhibition, Hamilton believed didn't reach pictorial success and decided to rethink her use of these made objects.[3] However, she then incorporated the toothpick suit into her suitably positioned installation, which finally created a connection between the object, in this case, a suit, and the figure, herself within the suit. This installation was directly associated with her body object series.[3]

body object series

While working on suitably positioned, Hamilton began to think about her subject matter differently, hoping to create an installation that "demonstrates a relation instead of making a picture of a relation."[3] This thinking led Hamilton to begin creating her body object series, a collection of photographs that began in 1984 with further editions produced in 1987, 1994, and 2006. In the series, Hamilton, along with photographer Bob McMurtry, shot photographs of herself wearing constructed objects, like her toothpick suit.[3] The coverings of the body in these photographs represent what Hamilton calls, "the articulation of the self at the boundaries of the body."[4]

privation and excesses

In San Francisco, Hamilton exhibited privation and excesses as a part of the Capp Street Project in 1989. The artist used $7,500 worth of pennies to cover a large portion of the gallery floor stuck to the surface by a thin coating of honey. In a chair on the edge of the field of honey and pennies, a figure (sometimes the artist herself) sat, wringing their hands in a hat full of honey.[4]

1991-2000

indigo blue

indigo blue, one of Hamilton's best-known works was first exhibited in a garage near the public market in Charleston, South Carolina in 1991.[7] She created the piece as a commissioned work as a part of the "Places with a Past" exhibition within the Spoleto Festival, in which artists chose a site and responded to both the historical and current context of the city.[8] The installation was an homage to labor, respectfully commenting on and remembering the process of manual work through sculptural elements like a pile of 47,000 blue work uniforms and sacks full of soybeans hanging on a wall.[7] Behind the table with stacked uniforms stood another table at which a writer sat, using an eraser and saliva to remove writing from small, blue-covered books from back to front, one by one, while the eraser shavings were left to accumulate within the books throughout the duration of the installation.[8] The action of erasing the past serves as another memory of labor[3], and the names embroidered on the shirts echo the history of the laborers living in the city.[4] The back wall held the hanging bags of soybeans that slowly spilled and began to sprout from the humid air within the space, calling attention to the atmosphere of South Carolina.[7] The title of the exhibition, as well as the incorporation of blue objects, likewise reference Charleston's history and indigo's economic significance as a plant and dye in the city.[3] The work was later acquired and exhibited by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[2]

2001-2010

the picture is still

This video was exhibited in Taura, Japan in 2001.[3] To create the video, Hamilton used a small surveillance camera positioned very near a black and white photograph of her son, over which she moved her hand in a continuous, slow motion. Because of the camera's position, the small lens, and the movement of her hand, which she calls "hand-seeing," the image in the video is often abstract and out of focus, a blur of mouths and noses.[3] The artist claims that the movement illustrates that "the picture is still...as in not moving...but also as in 'still here'...the way history haunts and inhabits the present."[3]

human carriage

As a part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's The Third Mind exhibition in 2009, for which various American artists were invited to participate in a contemplation and representation of the ways in which Asian literature, art, and philosophy are incorporated into, changed by, and transform American cultural trajectories.[9] Hamilton's installation for the exhibition was entitled human carriage, which incorporated her interests in humanity, language, text, and physical material.[10] Hamilton's installation referenced the movement and transmission of cultural information and identity through the use of books and a mechanism of travel.[2] The artist tied together cross-sections of book volumes, which she called "book weights," that were stored in piles at the top of the museum.[2] The book weights were then attached to a pulley system "carriage" operated by a "reader" at the top of the museum that manually operated the carriage to send books to the bottom of the rotunda where they accumulated in a pile. Along the building's existing spiral ramps, Hamilton also constructed a spiraling pipe that acted as a travel mechanism for a smaller bell carriage that housed Tibetan cymbals.[10] Released by the "reader," the bell carriage descended along the pipe, meeting the books at the end of the ramp while filling the space with ringing along the descent.[10]

2011-2018

the event of a thread

In 2012, Hamilton exhibited her installation entitled the event of a thread at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.[11] The installation featured a white curtain that spanned the 55,000 square feet of space, punctuated by large swings. The installation, like many of Hamilton's works, changed over time, involving the audience in an interconnected, multi-sensory experience of space.[12] For this installation, the artist involved the use of radios in paper bags that were available for viewers to carry around; the audio on these radios was broadcasted by two actors from the theater company SITI who read selections of text by various authors at one end of the room.[11] On the other end, a writer sat at a desk, writing sentences. The artwork changed day to day; the murmurs, cell phone rings, and laughs of the viewers, as well as the sounds of reading, writing, and cooing pigeons filled the space with sound, while the viewers’ swinging swayed the curtain. The audience was able to experience the space in different ways: swinging, looking in through a window, lying on the ground, or simply walking through the exhibition.[11]

Cortlandt Street subway station project

The New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts and Design Program commissioned Hamilton to create an art project as a part of the reconstruction of the Cortlandt Street subway station that was destroyed on September 11, 2001. This project, to be completed by 2018, is similar to her previous work, VERSE, in that it weaves together words, in this specific case, from notable historical documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The text will be white and will appear upon or within the surface of the white walls of the hub, covering up to 70 percent of the walls' surface. As in much of her work, Hamilton intends this project to be experienced rather than simply viewed. Whether tourist, regular commuter, or 9/11 survivor, each person travelling through the station will have a different relationship to these words.[13]

Awards and honors[2]

Commissions[2]

  • Waterfront Seattle (upcoming)
  • Park Avenue Armory (2013)
  • The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis (2010)
  • The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York (2009)
  • Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan (2006)
  • La Maison Rouge Fondation de Antoine Galbert, Paris, France (2005)
  • Historiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2004)
  • MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2003)
  • The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. (2003, 1991)
  • The Wanas Foundation, Knislinge, Sweden (2002)
  • Akira Ikeda Gallery, Taura, Japan (2001)
  • The Musee d'art Contemporain, Lyon, France (1997)
  • The Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands (1996)
  • The Art Institute of Chicago (1995); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1994)
  • The Tate Gallery, Liverpool (1994)
  • Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1993)
  • The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1988)

References

  1. ^ a b Simon, Joan (June 1999). "Ann Hamilton: Inscribing Place". Art in America.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Ann Hamilton Studio". www.annhamiltonstudio.com. Retrieved 2016-03-18.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Simon, Joan (2006). Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects. New York, NY: Gregory R. Miller & Co., LLC. ISBN 0974364851.
  4. ^ a b c d e Ann Hamilton: Mneme. Liverpool: Tate Gallery. 1994. pp. 10, . ISBN 185437138X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  5. ^ Dobrzynski, Judith H. (May 30, 1999). "Representing America in a Language of Her Own". The New York Times.
  6. ^ "ANN HAMILTON: the event of a thread : Program & Events : Park Avenue Armory". Park Avenue Armory. Retrieved 2016-03-18.
  7. ^ a b c Bruce, Chris; Solnit, Rebecca; Spector, Buzz (1992). Ann Hamilton Sao Paulo/Seattle. Seattle: Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington.
  8. ^ a b Sean Kelly announcement for Spoleto Festival, New York, 1992.
  9. ^ "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989". www.guggenheim.org. Retrieved 2016-03-18.
  10. ^ a b c "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989". Guggenheim Museum. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  11. ^ a b c Smith, Roberta (December 6, 2012). "The Audience as Art Movement: Ann Hamilton at the Park Avenue Armory". The New York Times. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  12. ^ "'Time Stopped—And Then Suddenly Rushed Again Toward Us'". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2016-03-18.
  13. ^ Dunlap, David W. (April 29, 2015). "At Cortlandt Street Subway Station, Art Woven from Words". The New York Times. Retrieved March 18, 2016.

Category:1956 births Category:Living people Category:American conceptual artists Category:American textile artists Category:People from Lima, Ohio Category:Artists from Ohio Category:Ohio State University faculty Category:University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Category:Yale School of Art alumni Category:University of Kansas alumni Category:American women artists Category:20th-century women artists Category:21st-century women artists

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