'Workaround' - Charlie Hammond at The Hunterian

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‘Workaround’ – Charlie Hammond at The Hunterian

WORKAROUND

24 June – 16 October 2022
Hunterian Art Gallery
Admission free

Opening on Friday 24 June, Workaround is a solo exhibition featuring new and existing work by Glasgow-based artist Charlie Hammond. 

In his practice, Hammond often considers the ways in which art might be understood in relation to work (as in labour) and to not working (as in play, but also dysfunction or breakdown). He uses readily available materials—sometimes even his own existing works—as a set of resources with which to inventively assemble paintings that embody these interests. Though the results can be deliberately humorous, they also serve to relate some of the central preoccupations of modern art, with its self-proclaimed abstraction and ‘progress’, to real-world concerns: the conditions of contemporary work, the iconography of domestic chores and the ‘improvements’ wrought by city planning. For this exhibition, The Hunterian has invited Hammond to select works from its collections that resonate with his artistic practice and works by Prunella Clough, Henri Gaudier-Breszka, and Carole Gibbons (among others), feature in the exhibition. His selections reveal the artist’s commitment to the sheer pleasure of image-making and creative experimentation—qualities that can make all kinds of pictures ‘work’.

Dominic Paterson, Curator of Contemporary Art, The Hunterian said, ‘Charlie Hammond’s work brings together a joy in the act of making with a canny sense of humour and a great deal of pictorial inventiveness. These qualities are very much in evidence in the new paintings and existing works that make up Workaround. I’m thrilled that Charlie accepted our invitation to pick out works from The Hunterian collection to accompany his own. His choices were predicated on finding exciting, surprising and enjoyable works to share with our visitors and I’m sure he has succeeded.’

Charlie Hammond said, “To be given the opportunity to not only show my own work but explore The Hunterian’s collection has been a great privilege. Searching boxes, drawers, making lists and simply getting things out… I hope I can offer the viewer something of this ‘looking’ experience, where the ideas, hierarchies and histories meet and the relationships between objects and artworks can remain dynamic.”