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Archive: Issue No. 41, January 2001

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MONTHLY ISSUE NO. 41 JAN 2001
Brad Hammond

Brad Hammond
Activated Toy #3, 1995
etched wax on board
200 x 80 cm



Brad Hammond

Brad Hammond
Activated Toy #3 (detail), 1995
etched wax on board
200 x 80 cm



Brad Hammond

Brad Hammond
De-Tuned Channel #56, 1999
etched wax on board
220 x 110 cm



Brad Hammond

Brad Hammond
De-Tuned Channel #136, 2000
etched wax on board
180 x 120 cm



Brad Hammond

Brad Hammond
De-Tuned Channels series (detail)



Brad Hammond

Brad Hammond

Brad Hammond

Brad Hammond
Transmission, 2000
7 minutes
Video still



Brad Hammond

Brad Hammond
Lotus in the Sea of Fire, 2001 Still from video installation



Brad Hammond

Brad Hammond
Thoughts Like Fish, 2001 video still



A feature on an artist in the public eye.

Brad Hammond - Beyond Language
by Kathryn Smith

Modus operandi:

Absa Atelier 2000 winner Brad Hammond uses the media of drawing and video to present the viewer with slices or chunks of time, which read as some kind of emptiness. His best known drawings are large-scale images of old toys or television 'snow', created by layers of etched wax on board. Video is treated as painting, creating fields of experience that may be generated from something as simple as a green light on a computer monitor, rippling water, a gas fire, or visual feedback from an edit suite. He is interested in the potential of video to create environments and continually refutes its tried-and-tested commercial narrative applications. As he says, "I want to see just how still a video can get, and hopefully with that, the viewer's mind as well. It's about consciousness rather than 'Art'".

In his dedication to Buddhist meditative practices, Hammond draws a comparison between 'World mind' and meditative mind. That is, being totally absorbed in the contents of one's thoughts versus an 'emptiness' which watches that happening. For this artist, art works in a similar way. He cites the work of Mark Rothko and Monet's Waterlilies as strong reference points to this 'emptying out' of narrative meaning.

Artist's statement:

"I'd say I work in two ways. One is a way that doesn't work for me, which is to start with an end result in mind and then try and connect the dots. That usually means that I'm thinking about the effect that the work will have or about how it relates to another work. It's too external. The best way of working is when I've given up on art, when I think it's silly. The most successful works are those that once I've finished them, I'm not sure if they are finished, I don't know what they're about, but I think about them a lot. I've always got a general sense of the area I'm working in, but it's about trying not to freeze it. Visual things are just triggers to explore consciousness, but what comes out of that is in the viewer's mind. When I see them as works, they're not right. A work must be a hole - a portal. The best works for me are those that when I look at them, I don't see them.

"To my mind, art is a by-product. It's a bit like a gas that's given off during an experiment. When you breathe it in, it becomes clear that some sort of reaction or transmutation has taken place. A visual image is released as the by-product of an experience.

"Meditative experience helps us to drop the whole game of centralizing into self. Art can be a meditative practice but it's difficult not to get caught up in its ego-centric aspect. In meditative states, the contents of mind are felt to be transitory, and it is art that arises out of this aspect of consciousness that intrigues me. Understanding the inherent emptiness of our experience and identity allows for a tremendous amount of space and understanding. Out of this inner spaciousness comes the possibility of creating visual images that dissolve neurosis and speed. As I see it, real transformation begins at this very simple level."

Currently:

As existentially incompatible as they may seem, there exists an intriguing metaphorical interface between the technological and the esoteric, which Hammond attempts to make material. His most recent video works, Lotus in the Sea of Fire, A New Anxiety and Thoughts Like Fish demonstrate his aspiration to spaces where there is nothing to unpick in the sense of finite meaning.

He describes Thoughts like Fish as his most meditative piece thus far. It opens to a thin vertical line of static framed by black. The static dissolves into tiny bubbles in and on the surface of water. It is only when the fin and tail of a fish pass on the bottom of the screen do we realise it's shot through a fish tank. Throughout, the borders on the edge slowly move wider. As such, the 'space' of the video broadens, eventually coalescing in a mass of pink static. The camera pulls back to reveal a tiny red LED light, shot in darkness.

The provenance of his latest drawing Asteroids is an eponymously titled computer game dating from the 1980's, which Hammond identifies as one of the first computer-generated 'landscapes'. As such, it stands for a 'virgin' space, the lo-tech forefather of virtual reality, and an unacknowledged portal to cyberspace. Mirroring the game, outlined white shapes float in a black field. Like his De-Tuned Channels, we are invited into a landscape of potential information and possibility, but decoding that landscape is dependent on whether we have the tools, physically, mentally and often spiritually, to do so.

Before that:

Last year, Hammond walked off with the coveted Absa Atelier Award for a trilogy of video pieces collectively titled Urban Mantra No.1, comprising Inner City, Breath Field and Heater, all of which were shown on his debut solo exhibition show earlier in the year. All three videos extracted images from an urban or domestic environment, whether it was pulsing lights atop Ponte City intercut with a haiku-type poem, a domestic heater slowing glowing red and fading, or a body of water shot from an increasing distance until it came to resemble television static.

The interface between the particular materialities of physical mark-making (drawing) and more abstract gestures (video) provide a rich area for dialogue in Hammond's work. A new video work Transmission began as an attempt to create an extension to what Mark Rothko was doing with paint. But as he points out, "there are qualities about video in relation to painting that assert themselves and that have to be worked with. Those are flatness, light emitting from the surface (not reflected), the absence of mark making in a physical sense, and most importantly, movement."

Observing feedback on an editing system seemed to speak of a kind of digital abstraction. Manipulating feedback becomes the mark-making practice, along with particular colour treatment and slow motion. Images of Buddhist deities literally melt into digital slurs, and colour fields appear ghosting each other in layers of digital density. As he says: "The title refers to two things. Firstly, the transfer of information via an invisible frequency from a source to a set designed to translate that vibration into an image. As such, it deals with the contemporary landscape of television which, in my work, has come to represent inner experience, with its range of channels or frequencies. Electronic media has become the space where many of us are directing our consciousness. The second layer to the title is the notion of transference of consciousness that involves an introduction to the awakened state of mind - to 'tune in'."

And before that:

As a student at Wits University, Hammond produced a series called Activated Toys, where his technique of etched wax on board came into its own. His labour-intensive, often ghostly white and tactile studies of second-hand toys that float against a 'non-space' background served as initial explorations into the way in which we invest the world and its objects with meaning. As he points out, "a toy is a space or vessel that you project into - it's a sponge for experience - you give it life, meaning - second-hand toys come invested by previous owners." Television is a toy for adults, and a space that functions very closely to how Hammond conceives of toys.

In his debut solo show 'De-Tuned Channels', held at the Johannesburg Civic Gallery early last year, the object-based familiarity of toys gave way to images of television static, created in etched wax, by photographing randomly selected 'de-tuned' channels, to probe the deeper currents that move beneath tangible information. The fundamental underlying principle has to do with possessing the necessary tools to hook into existing frequencies, in order to create a sense of meaning. As such, shapes begin to emerge from the 'snow' that resemble landscape, or bodies of water

Hammond derives much from the space of the technological, which is apparently seamless and devoid of the traces of labour. His labour-intensiveness in his working method here has to do with an implied presence or, " putting consciousness into that space. I have a body and I can make marks. I don't want to become computer space - I'm not talking about technology, I'm talking about consciousness. It's a language and a tool. All the excitement about the term 'new media' - it's just another thing. "

Next up:

From March this year, Hammond will be taking up residency in the Cite des Arts International in Paris for six months where he is looking forward to being in a new space, and "where the most basic things that you take for granted at home become a big deal". In trying to avoid any overdetermined sense of expectation, he has a mind to use the time to 'forget' about his own work, but plans to shoot footage for video works to come. In the pursuit of a successful working method, he says: "If you want to bath a dirty child, you have to convince him that he wants to float boats."

Selected Curriculum vitae:

1974: Born Harare Zimbabwe (worst day of my life)
1987 - 1991: National School of the Arts
1992 - 1995: BA Fine Arts, dist. (1995) University of the Witwatersrand
Awards
1995: Anya Millman Scholarship (University of the Witwatersrand)
1998: Merit award winner, Sasol New Signatures
1999: Finalist, ABSA Atelier Competition
1999: Overall winner, Kempton Park/Thembisa Metropolitan Council's annual art competition
2000: Winner ABSA Atelier Competition
Group exhibitions
1996: "Scramble" Civic Gallery, Braamfontein
1999: "Channel" Association for the Visual Arts, Cape Town
1999: "Personal Concerns" Rembrandt Gallery
2000: "Sasol New Signatures Revisited", Klein Karoo Kunstefees, Oudtshoorn, April
2000: "Kyknet Animation Festival" Klein Karoo Kunstefees, Oudtshoorn, May.Curated "Contemporary SA Video Art" Civic Gallery Braamfontein July
2000: "Afro.disiac" Spark! Gallery, Johannesburg, November
Solo exhibitions
2000: "De-Tuned Channels" Civic Gallery in Braamfontein

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