Welcome to the 28th insertion of DEMUR®, an analytical series highlighting the intricacies of the artistic world and the minutiae lying within. In this episode visual artist Ann Hamilton provokes a youthful mantra in swinging between the complexity of age and cloth.
Ann Hamilton, born 1956 in Lima, Ohio, studied textile design and sculpture throughout her vast academic career. Attending the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Yale and New Haven, her studies have allocated a deep understanding of movement and the “relationships between things and space”. Often philosophical or created with deeper meaning, her works share interest in many artistic endeavours in order to draw from within, and allow the viewer to reside amongst the creation.
A key attribute of Hamilton’s work is that of multi-sensory engagement. Interactive spaces are habitual in her catalogue, often gripping with a visual, aural and physical experience. Accentuated to grand heights in her 2011 exhibit, titled ‘The Event of a Thread’, 42 swings oscillate through the air, tugging on an inviting, pulley controlled silk textile as it appears to dance on a whim of unity. As each person chooses to indulge, the sheet frolics in limbo between stagnance and animation, prancing effortlessly as the “audience” congregates.
Chatter assimilates a full room, cascading through the 55,000 square-foot hall over radios placed inside of paper bags. Participants may choose to carry each bag during their stay, listening to two readers who are sitting at a rustic wooden table, surrounded by caged pigeons and reading text into a microphone. On the opposite end of the room, seen past the mass of cloth, sits another element of Hamilton’s works - a writer, inscribing thoughts, both loose and divine, onto paper.
The mass environment feels wildly reminiscent of a dream, accentuating child-like characteristics in those of all ages. Within this, each mechanical part, living or not, works in harmony to push the pulley ropes and synch them back with every swing. The installation works not alone, but with cohesive harmony, much like our surrounding reality.
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