Reviews
MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS
LOWRY HOTEL EXHIBITION
CAPTIVE AUDIENCES 31 MAY- 10 JULY 2007
Follow the link for the feature in the Manchester Evening News on 8 June 2007
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/entertainment/arts/s/1008/1008619_bring_out_the_animal_in_you.html
ART REVIEW
Metro - Dec 2002
"These latest works display a seasonal touch, but with a trademark sinister edge...this is a secluded treat for the dedicated."
Not Just For Christmas ***
John Hamilton's paintings, as always, feature a cast of dreamlike characters - hairless, slight of frame, androgynous, their faces distinguished either by faint smiles or melancholy frowns. They act out enigmatic rituals dressed as animals, a mythology populated by children.
These latest works display a seasonal touch, but with a trademark sinister edge - rows of fairy lights could be mistaken for barbed wire, while a dancing group hark back to the pagan celebrations which would eventually be hijacked by Christianity.
But, it's not just for Christmas. The Little Artists - John Cake and Damn Neave - share a child-like approach to an, although, once beneath the surface of their superficially simple work. viewers find themselves deep in a world of art theory.
Based around a general concern for the commerce of art, a Lego tableau sees models of the artists at work in an art factory. On the walls are matching pairs of socks, underpants, handkerchiefs and ties classic unwanted Christmas present fare, here unexpectedly. loaded with creative significance. The polka dots on the socks relate to the work of German pop artist Sigmar Polke, and the Calvin Klein underwear is a reference to French conceptual artist Yves Klein. Granted, little of this is likely to occur to anyone but the serious art sleuth but this is a secluded treat for the dedicated.
Rob Haynes
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City Life - Feb 2001
"Strange how the empty eye-sockets follow you round the room."
John Hamilton Wendy J. Levy Contemporary Art, to 3 March
Here, the unmistakable signature of the artist is a sense of play. Refreshingly, these are images which inspire celebration and joy. There are hints of story-telling, games being played, and masquerade: the motif of masks pops up again and again. Thus In 'Underskirt', subjects are revealed 'at play' in a rather intimate space.
A wicked sense of humour is evident also. 'Happy Families' portrays kinfolk, but in the foreground a dog is pictured having just snatched a baby from its pram. or maybe it's just retrieving? The depth to this work prompts such questions throughout, even if at a glance the protagonists look uniform. In 'like a King' a slight shift of brush stroke affords the start of a grimace to a smile, hinting at different emotions. Furthermore, the language of the face in 'Together' reads soberly mournful.
Taken together then, Hamilton's work is an endearing blend of forthrightness, eye-catchiness and artistic sagacity. His subjects appear always ageless, sometimes sex-less, and beguilingly, 'eye-less' throughout. All of which assists the blurring of easily decipherable representation. The resultant quirky characters mean his canvases invoke that most elusive of qualities in art - which naturally defies description. hence: 'something other'.
The subjects sit somewhere between head and heart; objective/subjective; civilised/wild; femininity/masculinity; role-playing/honesty; polished and rough. The sense of play allows the work to straddle all such conflicts. A good thing too. Instead of walking a tightrope between whether the work is plain interesting or downright compelling, the playfulness allows for both.
'Strange how the empty eye-sockets follow you round the room'.
TIM BIRCH
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Metro Life - (Sep 23 - ???)
"Like the unsettled dreams of a modern day Beatrix Potter..."
Like the unsettled dreams of a modern day Beatrix Potter, the work of John Hamilton continues to illustrate obsessively ambiguous mythologies. Clone-like humans dress up as animals, surround themselves with animals, may even be partly animal themselves. Each canvas depicts a situation that the artist describes as 'a captured moment - what has happened before it or what happens next, only the viewer knows.'
In his Play Dead series, a prone figure is repeatedly tickled and prodded by two figures wearing bear-skin headdresses. Whether a child's game or an adult drama is, characteristically left unclarified.Safari is set in a living room bedecked with pot plants and statuary. An unconscious figure is carried by a central character, while two animal-headed men hide behind chairs in the background.Hamilton is clearly a dog person - Loyalty depicts a tableau of bonding between dogs and dog-headed men - although Run Rabbit Run finds a long, floppy-eared man seemingly in charge of a quartet of forlorn-looking rabbits.The frequently smiling faces in the exhibition can never suppress the sense that something is wrong. Hide and Seek articulates this unease perfectly, with three figures cowering beneath the voluminous folds of a dress, capturing the child-like feeling of fear that lies beneath such games. Rob Haynes
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The Big Issue - Oct 1995
"Quite poetic in a dream-like kind of way..."
I've suspected for a long time that there was nothing particularly angelic about angels. If you read about them in the Old Testament the tend to be fairly monstrous things with loads of heads, wheels and things on fire not the sort of thing one wants turning up on one's doorstep making pronouncements really.
Anyway.Angelic Creatures is a new exhibition by Manchester based artist John Hamilton at the Alaska Bar on Whitworth Street. There is a fairly strong religious theme running through the various pieces, at least in as much as a lot of them illustrate scenes from the bible and mythological literature. Stylistically the works remind me of the South American artist Ana Maria Pacheco; large, bulky, mythic figures, pictured in the middle of often unspecified action, with a sinister, ambiguous atmosphere.A lot of the pieces are vividly rendered in oils. The Fish Catcher is one such striking painting, and is characteristic in its themes. This does not seem to represent any specific incident, but possibly depicts an angel descending from above to attack a man. Or could it be something entirely different.
It is the artist's stated intention that the viewer should have to create the story for themselves sometimes. Others are clarified by their titles; etchings of The tower of Babel and Orpheus and Eurydice illustrate reasonably familiar tales, and both share the theme of spiteful gods. The pictures themselves do not appear especially nasty - in fact they are quite poetic in a dream-like kin of way - but they do both display an uneasy ambiguity, a feeling which strengthens when you know that they show the gods playing childishly malicious tricks on mortals.
The Man With the Gods on His Side perhaps epitomises the philosophy (if any), having a man in a chair with figures crowding in the background behind him. They may be toys, or they may be gods. The man may be relaxed in his chair, or he may be dead. In common with a lot of the pieces the characters do not have pupils in their eyes, so emotion is difficult to determine. Never trust a god anyway, that's what I say.
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Flux Magazine - Apr 1998
"Hamilton's canvases, like many painters before him, are original but reminiscent. His figures are similar in style to the Great Master himself - Goya."
'Faces, Places' two artists stand out - John Hamilton and Bob Peacock.
Hamilton's canvases, like many painters before him, are original but reminiscent. His figures are similar in style to the Great Master himself - Goya. This feeling has an affinity to that of Paula Rego, in that it could be described as sinister, but according to Hamilton that has more to do with the minds of the audience than his own."I really like the way that one image can conflict - it may have two completely different views. It could be very happy and jolly and it could also have a sinister side to it, depending on who is looking at it. There is one particular picture I did, there is a figure with an angel hovering above it, and a couple commented on it.
One said they really liked it, as the angel seemed peaceful, like a guardian angel, and the figure was sleeping. Then the other person commented that they didn't like it because they saw the angel as death and the figure was dead."Hamilton enjoys the ambiguous nature of his work. "I try not to give too much away about my ideas behind it because I am more interested in finding out their ideas behind it. Some of the distorted views are tragic.
If you tell them about the story you can put them off." Stories are an essential part of the work, even when John begins to put together his ideas as studies and paintings. "I see them as small scenarios, as film sets, like theatre stills. There is something going on but you're not quite sure what has happened before that and you're not quite sure what's going to happen next. I can change this figure, make it do this, and in effect change the whole story. The story becomes quite irrelevant in the end."
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The Big Issue - Apr 1998
"They might be illustrations from a children's storybook, such is their gentle presence and innocent hollow eyes staring without suspicion through the paper. "
ArtCo is still finding its feet. There's a higgledy-piggledy atmosphere. Paintings that don't quite match are unashamedly hung next to one another. There are John Hamilton's eerie fantasy paintings of good-natured dumpling-like alien boys playing in their far-off land, which look more like believable worlds in the small etchings that lie casually in a portfolio on the table.They might be illustrations from a children's storybook, such is their gentle presence and innocent hollow eyes staring without suspicion through the paper.
Bridget Hayden