There’s a Susie Hamilton book launch, exhibition and talk coming up, the launch and exhibition opening is on Tuesday 8th October with the artist and art critic Louisa Buck in-conversation on Tuesday evening 15th October at London’s Paul Stolper Gallery. Susie is a painter we much admire here at Organ, she has featured in a number of our Cultivate shows…

‘Art transforms things and it can transform misery and apathy into delight and activity.’  Susie Hamilton

‘Susie Hamilton’, published by Anomie, documents the breadth and depth of the oeuvre of the artist who uses literature as a springboard. Hamilton’s dynamic practice is concerned with a wide range of subjects. From the heroic, isolated exploits of astronauts and Arctic explorers to lone shoppers in supermarkets, all subjects are equal under her gaze. Other works turn attention towards crowds on beaches and in hotel dining rooms, who, as in Hamilton’s paintings of single figures, are invaded by blooms and veils of paint. This, the first major monograph of work by Hamilton, who is represented by Paul Stolper Gallery, London, features an introduction by critic and broadcaster Charlotte Mullins, an interview with writer and broadcaster Louisa Buck and an extended essay by writer Anna McNay.

‘Bright light, neon or natural, is a recurring element in my work. I’m especially interested in the way that light dissolves boundaries and makes things mutate into abstraction. by making them into shapes rather than nouns or named things they become more mysterious and unstable. ‘Riddled with Light’ is a quote from WB Yeats. This is a painting in which one of the figures is almost completely erased by the sunlight.’

‘For me bright light can be destructive as well as blissful. It can involve a spiritual idea of something beyond, something holy that is outside the utilitarian or the mundane. Then there’s the negative feeling of light being like a nuclear blast – the way that light can fizzle things and eat into their contours, the idea of light as a destroyer as much as a giver.’

‘My materials are not just servants of representation but are also used to assail the people depicted with blots, lines or veils. My figures are invaded by pencil marks, obscured by layers of acrylic or dissolved into fluidity, with the result that they are transformed into something vulnerable or damaged.’

‘I’ve never wanted to be fully abstract. I want that tension between the known and the unknown.’

Book Launch, Exhibition
Book Launch and Private View Tuesday 8 October 6 – 8pm

‘Susie Hamilton’, the first major monograph on the artist’s woravailable for purchase now at £45

Exhibition ‘Radiance and Shadows’ Tuesday 8 October – Saturday 19 October. The gallery is open Monday – Saturday 10am – 6pm

Talk
Susie Hamilton and Louisa Buck in-conversation Tuesday 15 October 6 – 8pm The conversation will start at 6.30pm prompt. RSVP via the gallery for this event is essential as seats are limited

Paul Stolper Gallery is at 31 Museum Street, London, WC1A 1LH