20/5/2009
Mark Hamilton
Four, Dublin
Ghosts of Mars. The exhibition presents an installation generating an expanding network of reference and association from a stripped down configuration of material and media.
Curated by Leif Magne Tangen
Ghosts of Mars presents an installation generating an expanding network of
reference and association from a stripped down configuration of material and
media.
A set of two wall texts is formed from grids of sewing pins wrapped with
black thread. Reconfigured from scraps of a novel, The Ticket That Exploded,
they hover as screens, operating as both image and text. The works read as
excerpts of paranoid messages or as fraught, fragmented signals from a
future battlefield while visually transmitting a composite of conceptual and
minimal methodology infected with craft materials. A type of hybrid and made
from the repetitive (hand)work synonymous also with assembly line production
and service sector labor.
Untitled (parallax) is a grouping of three single channel video loops
filtered, cut and processed from found footage. These screens playback a
flickering constellation of sets and ruins; debris falling through the
atmosphere captured by the automated weapons system of a military
helicopter, interiors and passageways in (the Nostromo) a massive mobile
factory mining space, and tracking shots of an environment of towers,
skeletal, ornamental, and constructed solely from scavenged materials.
The audio loop Untitled (blackbox recorder) is sequenced by traces of
ambient room noise and the clicking of the tape device used to capture the
original recording. The voice of “Tania”, a member of The Symbionese
Liberation Army, repeats a statement of militant intent and militaristic
syntax recorded in a period culminating in the group’s violent demise.
Ghosts of Mars modulates elements of an existing economy of signs, forms and
quotidian material. Hamilton mines and filters themes of alienation,
compulsion and disintegration combined with an investigation of established
notions of meaning-production, reflecting on perceptual limits and processes
of comprehension.
K.A. Kolenda
Mark Hamilton lives and works in Leipzig, Germany and is currently a
stipendiary of the Cultural Foundation of Saxony. Previous solo exhibitions
include Reverb, Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig (2008) and Echoplex,
Artists Space, New York (2006). Upcoming group exhibitions are at the Luigi
Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato, Italy and Reduction and
Suspense, Bregenzer Kunstverein, Austria.
FOUR is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.
For further details please contact Lee Welch on +353 (01) 872 9315
Opening: Thursday 21 May 2009 6-9 pm
Four
11 Burgh Quay - Dublin
Opening Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 12 to 5 pm
Free admission