Corpus at Mass Moca Building 5 Gallery, North Adams, MA - 2003- 2004
Forty machines dropping 8x11” pieces of onionskin paper, 24 speakers moving up and down in 15-minute cycles with voices reading text written by Hamilton. Two tiers of windows with 3380 panes of glass covered in pink.
Ann Hamilton's Corpus was the installation up at Mass Moca the first time I went there. It was impressive - an experience. But I wasn't familiar with Ann Hamilton and it was not until 6 years later when I was teaching a class and one of her installations was featured in the book that I looked her up and realized she was the same artist whose work I had seen at Mass Moca.
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Indigo Blue, originally created 1991 for the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, At SFMOMA 2007, installation | cotton clothing, wood and steel platform, wood table and stool, book, eraser
.....indigo blue embodies the artist's abiding concerns with how material realities possess temporal qualities, or how changes in organic or cultural matter can speak to forgotten or overlooked histories and inform our perception over time."
Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/about/press/press_events/releases/311#ixzz1wshRWq60
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
"Indigo blue is comprised of some 18,000 pieces of used, blue work clothes that are folded and piled on a steel-and-wood platform. In front of the platform are a wooden table and stool where an attendant sits and erases text from a book titled International Law Situations, published by the Naval War College, exemplifying Hamilton's incorporation of an active, physical presence within her work....Hamilton typically engages participants in the unmaking of some component in her installations, whether through acts of erasure, burning, or emptying. The performative actions of the body are an essential aspect of Hamilton's work, investing the piece with an element of authorship. The activity in indigo blue, in particular, speaks to how traces of the human body have the potential to participate in the rewriting of a history.
.....indigo blue embodies the artist's abiding concerns with how material realities possess temporal qualities, or how changes in organic or cultural matter can speak to forgotten or overlooked histories and inform our perception over time."
Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/about/press/press_events/releases/311#ixzz1wshRWq60
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of hearing a lecture by Ann Hamilton in Louisville - at U of L. It was a great experience to hear her talk about her works. I gathered that she is not that fond of talking about her work - I don't think that most artists are. Just hearing her talk about a few things - somewhat in depth - added to the understanding of many of her others.
I like the way in which women are often represented - and how the works are often fleeting / temporary. There are many aspects that describe life, and a rather zen perspective.
Bio
American, born 1956, lives in Columbus, Ohio
Ann Hamilton studied textile arts at the University of Kansas, where she completed her BFA in 1979. She went on to earn an MFA from Yale University in sculpture in 1985. Her varied background in the visual arts informs her artistic practice, which takes the form of installations, videos, objects, and performance. Hamilton’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2002), Musèe d’Art Contemporain in Lyon, France (1997), and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1994). In 1999, Hamilton was selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. Her honors include a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (1993), The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1990), and a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1989).
