Charlie Hammond

Untitled (Bread Man), 2006

Born: 1979, Aylesbury

Based: Glasgow

Represented by: Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow

Hammond was born in Aylesbury in 1979, and graduated from the painting department at Glasgow School of Art in 2002. Selected group shows include: ‘If Not Now’ (Broadway 1602, NY); ‘Keep Passing the Open Windows’ (Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne); ‘You will be re-materialised through your secrets’ (Michael Benevento, LA); ‘Expanded Painting 2’ (3rd Prague Biennale), and ‘Dogtooth and Tessellate’ (The Approach, London). Hammond has presented solo shows at Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow (2007), Anton Kern Gallery, New York (2008) and Michael Benevento, Los Angeles (2008). 2009 projects included group shows at Timothy Taylor, London, Galerie Keinzle & Gmeiner, Berlin and White Columns, New York as well as a solo show at Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow. He will have a two person show with Michael Bauer at Linn Luhn, Cologne in April 2010. He is based in Glasgow.

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