Hamish Carr
Installation view, photo Clare Rae
Sweetmeat
, 2018Installation view, photo Clare Rae
Hamish Carr Sweetmeat
5 – 26 May 2018
For this exhibition, Hamish Carr presents a new body of work including paintings and sculpture. Carr’s paintings are meticulously layered with pigmented inks to depict a detailed and colourful web of shapes amongst a mass of dark cloud. Through a process of drawing and painting into the raw linen surfaces, his compositions emerge. These abstractions resemble cell like structures and are created using a careful methodology of ritualistic and repetitive mark-making. The exhibition suggests subtle references to confectionary and flesh that speak of voyeuristic and hedonistic tendencies.
“Sweetmeat” is graphic and deliberate while at times chaotic, drawing the viewer in to an intimate net of coloured fragments that are boldly interrupted by stark contrasting icons.
Hamish Carr received a Master of Fine Arts (Research) at the Victorian College of Arts, University of Melbourne in 2009. Since graduating Carr has been the recipient of grants from the Australia Council and Arts Victoria. In 2011 he completed an artist residency at Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo, concluding with a solo exhibition, and was a participating artist in the Australia-Japan Immanent Landscape Project at the Kurumaya Museum of Art, Tochigi. He has been short-listed for numerous art prizes including the John Leslie Art Prize (2014), the Fleurieu Art Prize (2013), Rick Amor Drawing Prize (2012), the Substation Art Prize (2012), and the Geelong Contemporary Art Prize (2012, 2008). He has held solo exhibitions at commercial and artist-run spaces in Australia and Japan. His work can be found in the following public collections, Artbank, Bullseye Glass USA, Geelong Gallery and the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.