Sorcha Dallas

For his second solo show at Sorcha Dallas Hammond presents a series of new paintings, mostly portraits, whose characters appear from the painted surface rather than existing in the painterly landscape. The results of an experimental studio practice where stains, spillages, over painting, cutting up and re-assembling the canvas create conditions in which a loss of control acts as both a physical base and conceptual starting point for the artwork itself.

A subdued pallet of cream, stains, grey buffs, raw linen and canvas are intended as a slightly stagnant surface on which the images unfold- worn out backdrops on which ceramic paint squirts can scatter logically and roads can be built.

The road motifs are represented as both physical highways falling out of (bypassing) the flat canvas as well as more painterly marks. This road building is on one hand a clumsy metaphor of human progress and on the other an effective tool for the image’s construction, an interest in political cartoons, Hammond attempts to liberate the subject by rejecting temporal nature of its context, however the structures and grammar of this veiled satire remains.