ANN Hamilton - MATTER Lecture
Border Crossings and the Winnipeg Art Gallery held their second MATTER lecture on Thursday, April 13th, 2017. Featuring two exciting speakers per year, MATTER brings significant artists, curators, writers and cultural commentators from all across the globe to Winnipeg.
This month, Border Crossings and the WAG brought internationally acclaimed artist Ann Hamilton to Winnipeg. Meeka Walsh, Editor of Border Crossings magazine, gave a beautiful introduction to the artist’s work, touching on ways that the work embraces indeterminacy, and like visual poetry, is both allusive and abstract.
MATTER Lecture : Ann Hamilton, April, 13th 2017.
Ann Hamilton spoke to a full house in the Muriel Richardson Auditorium and enchanted us all with her evocative imagery and her eloquence.
She began with,
“In my house, we have a very large print on the door, made by my husband Michael Mercil, who is also an artist. And it reads: ‘Art is good for you, make some everyday.’ And its silent mantra begins our day. But as you all know… making is a tricky thing, and the path is circuitous. Making a context or condition in which art can be made everyday is itself a form of making. Making a situation for learning, for speaking, for being in conversation, is a form of making… I would like to thank Meeka Walsh and Robert Enright for making a place and a context over many years for conversation, for listening, and for speaking. As an artist there is really no greater gift than to have someone carefully look and respond and see and help word the work that as a maker I am still trying to find the words for…”
Ann Hamilton is the epitome of generosity. She has the ability to articulate the methods and meaning behind her work with a remarkable precision and dexterity.
Gallery
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Meeka Walsh introduction.
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Ann Hamilton speaking at the Winnipeg Art Gallery for the MATTER Lecture Series. April 13, 2017
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tower · Oliver Ranch | 2007 (performances ongoing). Designed by Ann Hamilton for the Steve Oliver Ranch in Geyserville, California. Looking down the tower’s center to the pool of water below. (Right)
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Full House
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Ann Hamilton in conversation with Robert Enright.
MATTER Lecture : Ann Hamilton, April, 13th 2017.
The lecture was an overview of some old and new work that culminated with her most recent photographic work, ONEEVERYONE. ONEEVERYONE is an ongoing project that captures images of individuals from behind a thin polyurethane membrane. The images reveal varying levels of intimacy and an unexpected interiority. They are a tactile register of an exchange between the subject and the photographer. Like in most of her work, this project investigates ways in which we make touch visible.
The lecture was followed by an on-stage conversation between Ann Hamilton and Senior Contributing Editor of Border Crossings, Robert Enright.
Border Crossings would like to thank Ann Hamilton for taking the time out of her busy schedule to come and present. She is truly an inspiration.
Watch the lecture in full here:
MATTER Lecture : Ann Hamilton, April, 13th 2017.
Last November, the MATTER Lecture series brought American artist, writer, and critic David Salle to Winnipeg. In a Canadian premiere, we launched his new book, HOW TO SEE: Looking, Talking and Thinking About Art, after the lecture. There is an excellent review of Salle’s book by Sanford Schwartz in the March Issue of the The New York Review of Books.
Border Crossings and the Winnipeg Art Gallery would like to thank the Winnipeg Foundation for their support of the MATTER lecture series.
Stay tuned! Watch for the next MATTER Lecture on Contemporary Art in October 2017!
