HAMISH COLEMAN – Swept Under – 10 Oct-3 Nov, 2017

A series of eight new paintings from Hamish Coleman based around memory, trace and reoccurring imagery, with stills from various NZ short films being the starting point.

    

          

Hamish Coleman is a Wellington based artist. Born in 1989, Coleman graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (hons), from the University of Canterbury in 2012. Since 2009 he has exhibited across New Zealand in a variety of artist-run spaces and institutional galleries. He was a finalist in the 2013 Annual Wallace Awards at the Pah Homestead in Auckland.

“I deal in the removal and representation of images, which are grounded in the act of searching and collecting screen captures of existing found film footage. In their original state these stills are blanketed in obscurity and isolation, but through a process of departure and adaptation into paint these elements are elevated. This allows exploration of tensions that lie between figuration and abstraction, and sets up a continuous and ongoing dialogue between the two. The original image is transcended and it is the paint itself that challenges the hierarchy of the figurative subject. Ideas are investigated around painting as an object through my hand made, often unusually shaped support structures, which play off and against the surface.”
Hamish Coleman, November, 2016.