Alex Hamilton

One of the great pleasures of being a dealer in contemporary art is the close contact one makes with the artists. I have had the privilege in a long career of meeting and working with some extraordinary people. I have noticed that painters can be roughly divided into two groups. The first, and by far the largest, consists of artists who find their style or metier and slowly and methodically develop over the years. The second and smallest group is those artists who fizz with ideas and concepts like a shaken can of cola.

All too often these painters, to continue the metaphor, all gas and no substance but ocassionally someone like Alex Hamilton happens. This is my fifth one man show of Hamilton's and I am always astonished at the direction he takes and the obsessive nature of his research and collection of source material. He combines this with a meticulous technique to create haunting and lovely paintings that celebrate that part of the human psyche that seeks through dance, story telling, food, ritual or mechanical invention to transcend the corporeal and attain the ineffable. 

                                                                                                                                    TRENT READ

Collected Celebrity

The inspiration for this exhibition is positive nostalgia, popular iconography and the obsessive nature of fame and the celebrity cult. After two years of researching and total immersion into this topic, the concept of our collective fascination with fame is still a relevant and exciting topic to explore.With my collected celebrity canvasses I hope to tap into the history of heroes, the exploration of eras and time, and the iconography of contemporary popular culture. These images are put together either in themes and stories which aim to portray an alternative archive of our present and past, or just randomly, to create interesting conversation between these icons. These stories vary in depth of “emotion” and “importance” but collectively tell of our very personal journey through the history of iconography.Within these paintings you will find icons representing all our aspirations, desires, styles, fears and joy. This is linked to my idea that all our memories are connected to specific images and within the rich complexity of 1200 icons there is an image that will connect to specific emotions on a very personal level.

Because of this complexity, it allows everybody to interact with the art, comment on their personal journey and play a game of “spot the celebrity”. This interactive element has become an important part of my art and has created a fascinating platform for personnel expression and choice, not only by me, the artist, but also the viewer.

                                                                                                                                  ALEX HAMILTON