Nick Waplington: Living Room @ Hamiltons Gallery, London

Nick Waplington: Living Room 

Hamiltons Gallery, London 

14 March – 25 May 2024 

NICK WAPLINGTON

Untitled (LR86.170), from the series 'Living Room', 1985-1997 

© Nick Waplington

“I am seeking and searching constantly. People ask me what I find interesting, and the answer is everything.” – Nick Waplington

Hamiltons presents the gallery's first exhibition with Nick Waplington, marking the release of previously unseen image variants and new works from his iconic series Living Room, 1991.

Nick Waplington’s first book, Living Room, was published in 1991, and was an instant sensation within the photography world and beyond. The 59 photographs in the original edition documented the lives of friends, families, and neighbours on the Broxtowe housing estate in Nottingham, England, where Nick Waplington spent many years making thousands of images. This extensive archive of unseen photographs forms the basis of this new conceptual remake of the 1991 monograph, one that revisits and refashions  Nick Waplington’s iconic work from a contemporary vantage point. This new work follows the same sequencing of landscape and portrait images as the original edition - replacing each of the 59 photographs with an as-yet-unseen work from the Living Room archive, often from the same roll of film as the original image. The result is both familiar and uncanny, a vivid journey back to Thatcher’s Britain and a testament to the decades of art and life that have elapsed between then and now.

Whilst Waplington’s early work was intrinsically rooted in ‘documentary’ practice, it also challenged the conventional documentary gaze. Simon Baker, director of Maison Européenne de la Photographie, importantly notes that Waplington employs a deeply humanistic approach which is resistant to voyeuristic or intrusive documentation. Indeed, Simon Baker states: “Waplington is broadly curious and deeply committed in his work, and as serious about family life as politics or art, or music and the social cultures around it, but always as both witness and participant”, a method which achieves his simultaneous intimacy and invisibility.

“When I thought something was going to happen, I’d pick up the camera and take some pictures very quickly and then put the camera down. And then not take any again for a while. You don’t want to be taking pictures all the time in a documentary-esque situation, because otherwise it becomes about you and the camera and not the situation. It’s about having an instinct for when something is going to happen.” – Nick Waplington.

Nick Waplington’s choice of a 6x9 camera, commended by John Berger in an essay in both the 1991 and 2024 publications of ‘Living Room’, produces a landscape crop where “the forms photographed have the space to expand, to become landscapes, or even firmaments“. The artist’s purposeful use of colour emanates American street landscape characteristics, mixed with a quintessentially British documentary style. Nick Waplington reacts to what he describes as the common “grainy, downtrodden, black and white interpretation of working-class life”; instead, Nick Waplington’s lens does not estrange the subjects from the viewers but turns the domestic into public in a way where tears, screams, jokes, solace, tiredness and pleasure have equal room.

NICK WAPLINGTON

UK and US-based artist Nick Waplington works with photography as a medium to submerge in communities, resulting in personal involvement and visual work. He caught the attention of John Berger and Richard Avedon, along with the rest of the world, in the 1990s with Living Room and has since then created recognisable, frank representations of people and their socio-political backgrounds. Beginning in his teenage years, his subjects have ranged from post Punk youth culture against the backdrop of Thatcherism, to the heyday of House and rave culture in 1990s NYC. In 2008/9 Waplington documented the production of the last collection of Alexander McQueen at his London studio. He continues to work in London and New York on a series of overlapping photographic and art projects.

Nick Waplington has had solo shows as an independent artist across the UK and the USA, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art (The ‘Living Room’ and ‘Circles of Civilization’ Series, 1992), The Photographers’ Gallery London (‘Living Room’ 1990-1991) and more recently Tate Britain (‘Working Process’ 2015). His works have also featured in group shows at the Venice Biennale (‘Learn How To Die the Easy Way’, 2001), Brooklyn Museum in New York City (‘This Place’, 2016) and White Chapel Gallery (June-September 2017).

His works are part of the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Victoria and Albert Museum and Government Art Collection in London and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Alongside being honoured with the Infinity Award: Young Photographer in 1993 by the International Center of Photography in New York City. Nick Waplington practice making books and zines continues with publications like Comprehensive with Phaidon and self-published via Jesus Blue such as Anaglypta.

 

HAMILTONS

13 Carlos Place, London W1K 2EU 

www.hamiltonsgallery.com

Mario Testino @ Hamiltons Gallery, London - "Gone Wild" Exhibition

Mario Testino: Gone Wild 

Hamiltons Gallery, London 

21November 2023 – 3 February 2024 

Hamiltons presents ‘Gone Wild’ featuring exclusive, new work by internationally renowned photographer MARIO TESTINO. Shown at the gallery for the first time, the images feature an array of animals; from lions in Kenya to rare birds in Brazil. 

This new series contributes to Mario Testino’s ongoing project ‘A Beautiful World’ which explores and documents the cultural traditions of people and the natural world from around the globe, Hamiltons presented the first glimpses of Mario Testino’s ‘A Beautiful World’ in 2019. Whilst Testino has historically been recognised as one of the world’s most in-demand commercial and fashion photographers, his life and career’s real magnum opus is at its genesis. 

Dr Jenifer Allen writes “Mario Testino expands the frontiers of wildlife photography. The locations remain remote: from eagles in Mongolia to zebras in Namibia. Yet Testino pushes the borders of this classic genre far beyond simple documentation. His pictures communicate much more than an animal photographed unawares in its natural habitat.

First, Mario Testino brings his sartorial eye to fauna and fowl. Their habitats have been transformed into ideal, curated sets, shifting between nature and imagination. The birds’ feathers recall the singular and extravagant creations of haute couture. Balearica pavonina, Brazil, and Goura cristata, Brazil, 2022 evoke designer millinery. Phasianus colchicus, Brazil, 2022 seem to shimmer in jewel-encrusted coats. 

Yet, unlike fashion photographs, these images pit vibrant colours against inky dark backgrounds: gemstones in velvet caskets. Some birds look as if they had stepped out for the evening, only to be captured by paparazzi. The nocturnal surroundings match the birds’ tiny black pupils, thus amplifying the many hues glowing around them. 

Mario Testino has always taken a painterly approach to photography, which traditionally relied on speed and light. Yet post-production brings photography closer to painting which can be slow and dark while augmenting polychromatic details. The colours in these photographs have been refined much like a painter’s palette. Rembrandt’s sombreness, Caravaggio’s dramatic sets and Manet’s backgrounds all come to mind, despite Testino’s vastly different subjects.

For Mario Testino, a photograph is not a document but a tool for creating a scenario. For exploring creativity and emotion. What you feel is more important than what species you can identify. If there’s a document here, it’s a chronicle of Testino’s imagination: his own personal AI.“

Mario Testino: Gone Wild consists of 17 C-type Fuji Supergloss prints mounted to aluminium.

MARIO TESTINO - BIOGRAPHY

Regarded as one of the world’s most influential fashion and portrait photographers, Mario Testino is responsible for the creation of emblematic images, transmitting emotion and energy in an open and intimate way, to document people all over the world.

Mario Testino's work has been exhibited in museums around the world, including the Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin (Undressed, 2017) the Shanghai Art Museum (Private View, 2012) and the National Portrait Gallery, London (Portraits, 2002). Mario Testino’s most recent body of work is an artistic exploration of cultural identity, part of a wider project to highlight diverse beauty. As he travels the world, Testino reveals what makes culture in each country unique, challenging us to find a more sustainable balance between change and tradition.

More than 17 books of his photography have been published, including MaRIO DE JANEIRO Testino, Kate Moss by Mario Testino, Alta Moda and Fina Estampa. Alongside his 40-year practice as a photographer, Testino has realised a body of work as a creative director, guest editor, art collector, philanthropist, and museum founder in Lima. In recognition of his charity work, Testino was awarded the Legion of Honour of France in 2017, the Order of the British Empire in 2013, and the Grand Cross Order of Merit in Peru in 2014. In October 2016, Testino opened the first Parques Teresita playpark in association with Natalia Vodianova and the Naked Heart Foundation in Cusco, Perú, and the second in January 2019 in Ayacucho, Peru. A third park was opened in March 2023 in Alto Selva Alegre, in Arequipa. 

‘Gone Wild’ is Mario Testino’s third exhibition with Hamiltons.

HAMILTONS GALLERY

13 Carlos Place, London W1K 2EU

www.hamiltonsgallery.com

Daido Moriyama @ Hamiltons Gallery, London - A Journey in Ink

Daido Moriyama: A Journey in Ink

Hamiltons Gallery, London 

8 September - 30 October 2021

Daido Moriyama is recognised as one of Japan’s most influential photographers. Now in his 80’s, Moriyama’s oeuvre includes colour pictures, Polaroids, films, installations and most rare and importantly, silkscreens. 

Made using deep black ink, the artworks are larger in scale, produced either as unique works or limited editions – a complete reversal to his uneditioned gelatin silver prints. Recognised immediately for their gritty and mysterious style, the artworks pay tribute to the multiple aspects of his oeuvre from his initial projects made in Tokyo in the ’60s to his later influences which would push his work to contemporary, international acclaim.

This year marks 50 years since Moriyama saw Andy Warhol’s silkscreens at his inaugural exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1971. The New York times reviewed the presentation, concluding; “The plain, inescapable fact, which will give pain to his enemies, is that Andy looks better than he has ever looked before.” The same is certainly true of Moriyama’s silkscreens.

Whilst Daido Moriyama was influenced by a variety of artists, Warhol may be the most important of these. When Moriyama first discovered Warhol’s silkscreens, he was immediately seduced by the medium’s traditional printing technique, which he found to be a natural extension of his photographic language. The method allowed for repeating images 'identically,' creating seemingly endless variations that call the very value of our cultural icons into question. Like Warhol’s, Moriyama’s work is a response to our ever-changing relationship with advertising, celebrity culture and digital media. 

Unlike Warhol however, Daido Moriyama has always been dedicated to street photography. He devotedly, obsessively takes street snaps all with a compact camera that fits in the back pocket of his jeans. In the words of writer and curator Simon Baker, “To me, Moriyama appears to be a person who walks around the city with his camera, glancing at things and people that interest him. Like a spark, he reacts in an instant to the city and to people. I don’t think he stares and composes an image, but rather passes by, glancing.”

When he walks down a busy street, he never stops shooting, often not looking in the viewfinder. As a result, his pictures have a palpable energy lacking in those of his predecessor, Warhol. In fact, Moriyama inherited this philosophy of movement from another American genius of the era, Jack Kerouac and his acclaimed novel ‘On the Road’ (1957). Throughout the 1960’s and ’70s, inspired by Kerouac’s story, Moriyama travelled globally and all through his home country on national highways recording his journey with the camera.

Some of Daido Moriyama’s most iconic motifs are his images of street signs, which hint toward the Americanisation of Japanese culture and the increased eroticism in high-street advertising. Others are of mannequins, shop fronts, passers-by all taken in motion on his journey, like votive plaques of his movements through Tokyo and beyond. The silkscreens bring a stillness to the images through their scale and dynamic, inky surface. But the energy which drove them emanates from each momentous canvas.

DADO MORIYAMA - Biography

Daido Moriyama was born in 1938 in Osaka, where he studied photography before moving to Tokyo in 1961. There, having worked as an assistant to photographer and filmmaker Eikoh Hosoe, Moriyama began to produce his own collection of photographs depicting the forgotten areas and darker sides of his home. His early work captures life during and following the American occupation of Japan after World War II; in particular the effects of industrialisation and the consequential shift in urban life in which some areas were left behind the rapidly changing city. 

Daido Moriyama has exhibited globally in several solo and group exhibitions, the most notable being at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in 2003 and again 2016, a joint retrospective with William Klein at Tate Modern, 2012 and presently an exhibition of silkscreens and photographs at Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) ending in October 2021. Daido Moriyama has also published multiple photo-essays and photobooks. He is held in a number of public and private collections and has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Photographic Society of Japan, 2004; Der Kulturpreis der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Photographie, 2004 and Mainichi Art Award, 2003 and The Hasselblad Foundation International Award, 2019, amongst others.

HAMILTONS GALLERY

13 Carlos Place, London W1K 2EU

www.hamiltonsgallery.com