Alaric Hammond

Alaric Hammond will present a challenging new body of work at his London exhibition From Cheek To Blushing Cheek. This powerful solo show is inspired by recent conflicts, protest and persisting influence of Empire.

“What does anyone in the West believe in these days?” comments Hammond. “Good and evil often look the same to me, no one knows who to trust, who’s winning or fighting and the lines will only be redrawn again tomorrow, so why do we care, what should we be defending?”

Hammond suggests there is an abandonment of ideology, cultural guidance and philosophy in today’s society. The artist presents a dystopian viewpoint exploring themes of subterfuge, decayed imperial grandeur and impotent protest within his work.

Lack of action and the prevalent sense of a world that doesn’t know how to fix its problems is a subject Hammond often returns to, the media’s use of generic images of unidentified masked individuals routinely offered to represent complex and diverse issues is another recurring theme in this new work. While we through the media are presented endlessly with the faceless protestor and oppressor, Alaric’s portraits, where the subject’s eyes, words or faces are often partly obscured, invite us to explore a more intricate and implied reflection.

These skilful and subtle charcoal drawings and paintings challenge this over saturated imagery of protest and revolt that’s used, often with little discretion or potency during times of conflict by the mainstream media, the artist employs scrawled text, cartoonish details and comic violence to inject a sense of shame in the loss or lack of moral values while equally representing notions of submissive humiliation to cultural dictum and slavish consumerism. The artist is keen to express that although these themes maybe considered solemn or austere, Hammond is not a pessimist nor a conspiracy theorist; the artist’s aim is in confronting the compromise, absurdities and conflict in living and defending our way of life.

“The more textural, decayed and eroded the artist’s images become, the more beautiful, complex and fascinating they appear,” and Hammond hopes the increasing decompositions will also resonate with the viewer.

The exhibition, at Forge & Co Gallery in the heart of Shoreditch, will feature traditional monotype works on paper, Intaglio etching and photo etchings from collaged film, which are then worked over in charcoal, oil sticks and inks. On canvas, Alaric employs mixed media techniques as the foundations of finished painting.

Alaric Hammond is a UK artist who’s debut exhibition for the Lazarides Gallery has quickly established his prodigious talent for image making honed from within the highly influential INSECT collective, continuing to collaborate with founder Paul Insect long after the studio closed in the final months of 2007.

Recent international exhibitions have taken place in Tokyo and Berlin with continued print releases at Lazarides, The Outsiders. In May 2013 Alaric’s ‘Super Glutt’ was included alongside Eduardo Paolozzi, Antoni Tapies and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff the Hatton Gallery’s Art & Text’ exhibition in support of their Ed Ruscha retrospective Pay Nothing Until April.

Alaric has developed a diverse practice of drawing, painting, collage and ﬁne art printmaking centred around his fresh approach to the traditional technique of etching. Alongside relief and intaglio-type printing the artist often employs a variety of acid bath techniques to corrode metal plates bearing his work in assemblages which dramatizes the effect of decades of wear from the natural passage of time and weather, and the hand of man in the form of pollution, neglect and vandalism.