On 25 August 2015, the Saatchi Gallery will open Caustic Windows: Works by Alaric Hammond in the Prints & Originals Gallery.

Caustic Windows showcases new works by the British contemporary artist Alaric Hammond. Each artwork is a sculptural assemblage, created in the studio utilising etching and corrosion processes on zinc plates which are then mounted onto wood. Each work consists of various finishes & textures and the colours are natural pigments developed by chemical reactions.

“The etching and corrosion process employed results in works suspended between creation and destruction. The objects represent genuine entropy. There is beauty in decay.” – Alaric Hammond

The motifs within the works are often mundane everyday items – text messages, email offers, spam, discarded product packaging, snapshots and consumer products. Many items are objects that we are routinely told we should buy to become better or more sophisticated people – shoes, cigarettes, prescription drugs, cosmetics or technology.

There is a strong sense of displacement in the works. Hammond has spent a lot of time living and moving between places; living in the margins of communities. This has led to an almost anthropological observation of how we live our lives in our cities.

The artist has found beauty in parts of the city that have not been ‘regenerated’. By contrast, too much clinical and banal homogeneity has been found in those areas that have been ‘renewed’.

These ideas (about how we live in cities, the relationship between desire & consumption, and the beauty that can be found in destruction) echo themes explored by writers and thinkers such as J.G. Ballard and Jean Baudrillard.

“Beauty is always underfoot; it is all around us if we just take the time to look. It cannot be founding the relentless cycle of aspiration and consumption to which we subject ourselves all too often.”

Alaric Hammond is an artist who lives and works in the UK. He divides his time between London and the North East of the UK.

Works by the artist featured in the Pop the Streets exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in February 2015. All the exhibited works by the artist sold.

The artist has previously had solo exhibitions in London & Newcastle, produced work as part of the influential INSECT collective and participated in group shows in Berlin and Tokyo.