Ashley Hamilton with one of her interactive installations
She showed me an old suitcase, open against the wall, with half a door hinge still attached to a piece of door, a curved piece of curved pressed wood with milled holes in it, a card filled with thumbtacks almost fresh from the store and dozens of similar artifacts. Against the wall were several torn fragments of wallboard, some with marks she had made on them. “They’ve all been abandoned at one point in time, but they find recovery through my own fascination,” she says. “I empathize with these found objects. I recover them by giving them new possibilities and meanings through a different context in an art form.” The piece she’s working on is made entirely of these found objects, plus a few marks she makes. She points out a playing card that’s “in conversation” with some red marks. “Some pieces I leave as is, but some require just a little bit of my touch, so it questions the author, authorship,” she says. “There’s a fine line between my mark and just letting the object be. I just intuitively make marks and arrange things spatially, then I reflect on it later and make changes accordingly.” This piece can be seen on all sides,
which she says, “challenges the idea of a painting hung on a wall that you just have to look at from one direction. You can see it all around from all sides. Maybe you also get a sense of impending failure, this sign that’s threatening to fall or this found remnant of a staircase that was being built, but it stops.” There’s also a sign covered in plastic. “The sole purpose of a sign is meant to be seen, but when covered up it questions its own existence,” she says.
to do nightly performances for five to ten days of work that the artists themselves found most challenging. Then there is the New Dischord festival of interdisciplinary art, another Hinck collaboration, in which she started playing with sound and inviting viewers to interact with her work. “I think more and more, my work is existing in this expanded field, an interdisciplinary field where I’m starting to reach out beyond painting,” she says. She sees her work as rooted in the intrinsically human struggle to understand self. “That’s why I walk the streets and find empathy with these objects,” she says. “In some way I think they’re extensions of myself. When I find a found object, I find a relation between us. I find the similarities and also resonate with the differences. I see found objects as their own little intimacies. They have their own stories to tell.”
Fine Art & Fine Wine Make A Perfect Pair
“All these objects were abandoned, but now they find recovery through possibility.” “Those are the kinds of things I’m interested in: Denied signification or lost signification or misunderstanding. As you walk around here you might have the feeling that something looks familiar, but you’re not quite able to penetrate the meaning. It’s full of possibilities, possibilities from impending failure. All these objects were abandoned, but now they find recovery through possibility.” Her work has been strongly influenced by her exposure to other artists that are challenging the boundaries of form and genre, first at Easy Lemon, the artist residency program she and Tim Hinck put on where they invited artists
Ashley Hamilton’s queered painting can be seen in UTC Art’s First Senior show at the Cress Gallery, opening Tuesday, Apr. 1. Presentations at 4:30 p.m., opening at 5:30 p.m.
Specializing in Creative Custom Framing & Original Art (since 1988) Original Art | Custom Framing 4250 Hixson Pike | 423.877.1391 m-f: 10am - 6pm sat: by appt
chattanoogapulse.com • March 20-26, 2014 • The Pulse • 21