Tag: ann hamilton

Ann Hamilton : privation and excesses, Capp Street Project, 1989, Open to the street, a display of 750,000 pennies, laid by hand, leaching
honey at the edges, the scent of copper and honey faced by the
smell and gaze of three sheep, a figure seated, hands wringing over
a hat filled with honey, two mortar and pestles grinding, teeth and
pennies.
The budget for this project, $7,500, was obtained in the denomination
of 750,000 pennies. They were laid into a skin of honey to define
a 45’x32’ rectangle on the floor. Facing this display a side room
housed 3 sheep, a person sat dipping and wringing their hands into
a felt hat filled with honey and two motorized mortar and pestles
ground elements that make reference to human systems: one abstract
and one biological. One ground a bowl of pennies; the other, a collection
of human teeth.
At the completion of the project, the pennies were cleaned and
counted, and then used to cover the expenses of the project. The
remaining money was donated to fund a symposium supporting
the collaboration between artists and educators in the San Francisco
Public School System.
–Ann Hamilton

Left: Ann Hamilton, still life, 1988

“Tables are my blank paper, my landscape, my figure, a plane that implies the
solitary figure and all that is social … two people sitting face-to-face, working
together, eating or speaking… . All tables inherit a history of their use as a site of
communion and sacrifice.
This work was conceived specifically for the home of a landscape designer, volunteered
for use for the exhibition. still life was situated in the living room, the space
that occupies a central physical and social position within the house. Eucalyptus
leaves sourced from the outside the house were encrusted in paraffin and covered
the room’s walls. An attendant sat in front of a dining table which was engulfed
by a stack of 800 men’s white shirts that were each laundered and folded, then
singed and gilded on the edges. A smaller table, placed against the wall, displayed
empty velvet jewelry forms. The metal fireplace which occupied the opposite end
of the room was removed; its bed of ashes remained as it was replaced by a 20’
live eucalyptus tree. Placed in and near the windowsill, two vaporizers scented
with eucalyptus oil filled the environment with moisture and a medicinal scent,
creating within the living room the feeling of something or someone askew. From
an unseen source, recorded excerpts from Carmen and The Magic Flute played in
the background.”
–Ann Hamilton

Right: Janine Antoni, “Slumber” (1993): “During “Slumber”, Antoni made the gallery her bedroom, where she recorded her brainwave signals of rapid eye movements (REM) on an electroencephalograph (EEG) as she slept. The following morning, she would use strips torn from her nightgown to weave patterns into a blanket corresponding to the resulting pattern on the REM graph. The entire process took place over an 8-day period. In her 2000 rendition of the performance at MASS MoCa, she wore a nightgown made from textiles printed at the mill when it housed Arnold Print Works from the 1860s to the 1940s (MASS MoCA is a renovated factory building from the industrial era). Visitors were allowed access to the gallery during the day when Antoni was weaving, but the museum was closed to the public at night while Antoni did her ‘dream work.’”—-Categorized Art 

Mona Hatoum, Slicer, 1999, Egg Slicer, stainless steel and marble.

“With this sculpture, Hatoum has turned an ordinary domestic object into something menacing by enlarging an egg slicer to measure four feet in length. The artist began to use kitchen utensils such as graters and colanders in her work during the 1990s, describing them as ‘exotic objects.’ They represented the traditional feminine domain of the kitchen, objects which traditionally kept the housewife tied to the home, yet greatly enlarged they assume a threatening aspect. ‘Slicer’ has been made on a human scale, with its slicing blades raised menacingly. This darkly humorous work is influenced by Surrealism – Magritte is one of Hatoum’s favourite artists and his paintings which distort scale are a predecessor of this work”

–National Galleries Scotland

vs.

Ann Hamilton, (privation and excesses • grinders), The Carol and Arthur Goldberg Collection1988/1991

“A component of the installation privation and excesses, 1989, was a pair of wall-mounted mechanized mortars and pestles, one of them grinding teeth, the other one grinding pennies. The dematerializing teeth were in contrast to the overriding element of that installation, a 45 x 32 foot field of 750,000 copper pennies-laid into a surface coating of honey on the building’s concrete floor. As Hamilton notes, “Where the installation juxtaposed the animal economy of honey to the human economy of money, these grinders similarly juxtapose the biologically produced and the human made.” For her earliest mechanized tables, as well as her most recent spinning speakers, Hamilton has tinkered with existing industrial equipment for sculptural and audio effect. The pulverizing sounds of these two grinders within the installation, as Hamilton notes, were ‘the background to the lathering movement and sloshing sound of hands in honey.’”Photo credit: Ben Blackwell
Text excerpted from Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects. New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2006. Joan Simon