I’d better stop now or I might start repeating myself

• By admin

8 – 29 November 2014

Exhibition Launch: 6pm Friday, 7 October 2014

Main space: Chris Hamnett, I better stop now or I might start repeating myself

The moving finger writes and, having writ,
Moves on, nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it
(Rubayat of Omar Kayham)

In the beginning this work originated as the endlessly repetitive graphic process of filling pages of empty paper with numbers. A Sisyphean toiling without end, futile, frustrating work, comforting in its own way, always there, safe. There is something lyrical yet ephemeral about this practice; in the same continuum as writing on water, a rope made of sand. Where Fx Harsano (Writing on the rain, 2011) writes on glass using ink which is immediately washed away before he can complete a character, Chris fills the walls, dances and waltzes along the line of numbers, dips and inscribes with sticks of chalk.

Moving from the static practice of working at a small scale this excursion into the fuller space of a room reveals the capacity to delimit his work, cross boundaries and move into extended territories. The whole body is involved in a performative yet workmanlike dance. The entire history of this project suddenly changes pace, from the quiet monotony and observances of a scribe or an enumerator to the fluid mutable flow of a dancer.

Annie Geard
(excerpt from a text by Annie about a previous exhibition by Hamnett)

Image: Chris Hamnett, Untitled 2014.