Charlie Hammond
03 Feb - 03 Mar 2007
CHARLIE HAMMOND
A puppet-master whose players often escape him, Hammond’s work is arch and knowing but never contrived. In scenes bestowed with allusive, Campbellesque titles, Hammond’s figures defy their author and take on a life of their own. Some recent works have seen these subjects proudly displaying themselves as high art, while other hide behind bushes, masked or under layers of jesmonite. In all Hammond’s work the paradoxical territories of sophisticated naivety and ‘chance domesticated’ are traversed, alternately controlling and relinquishing a grasp on authorial hierarchies. With tongue in cheek and a steady hand, Hammond walks the line between Romantic immersion and canny sagacity in his piquant, heady confections.
Susannah Thompson
© Charlie Hammond
The Gentleman's Cave, 2005
A puppet-master whose players often escape him, Hammond’s work is arch and knowing but never contrived. In scenes bestowed with allusive, Campbellesque titles, Hammond’s figures defy their author and take on a life of their own. Some recent works have seen these subjects proudly displaying themselves as high art, while other hide behind bushes, masked or under layers of jesmonite. In all Hammond’s work the paradoxical territories of sophisticated naivety and ‘chance domesticated’ are traversed, alternately controlling and relinquishing a grasp on authorial hierarchies. With tongue in cheek and a steady hand, Hammond walks the line between Romantic immersion and canny sagacity in his piquant, heady confections.
Susannah Thompson
© Charlie Hammond
The Gentleman's Cave, 2005