theshopsheffield

One week to go until Richard Forbes-Hamilton's solo exhibition opens at the Shop.

I hope you can join us on Tuesday the 13th. 6-8pm.

Here's some more information about Richard -

Richard Forbes-Hamilton is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Sheffield. Richard frequently focuses on a single idea or motif, which he then explores through repeated works and different materials and processes. This includes painting, experimental animation, sound, photography and textiles.

Worker presents a selection of work from an ongoing series from Richard’s practice that revolves around a motif of the same name. The worker exists as a figure identifiable by an ever-present, circular wide-brimmed hat.

The worker grew from a desire to find a figurative motif that possesses both a specific visual identity alongside a cultural and historical ambiguity — a motif that opens potential for viewers to make readings based on their own experiences and understandings, while serving as a vessel for Richard’s own exploration and discovery.

Initially, Richard’s interests in this motif formed around the signified purpose of the hat (such as the physically protective or the ceremonial) and also its potential as a formal tool in the configuration of an image — how its geometric or abstract shape might interplay in the arrangement of a figure within a frame. As time has gone on, the worker has provided a space for his own personal reflections, including those on identity, relationships to land, transcendence and connection through dance, masculine intimacy, and the possibilities of what it might be to engage in ‘work’.