Ann Hamilton to Speak at MATTER Lecture at the WAG on April 13, 2017

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Ann Hamilton. "the event of a thread," 2012-2013

Park Avenue Armory in New York, NY.

BORDER CROSSINGS and the Winnipeg Art Gallery will present the next MATTER lecture with internationally acclaimed artist Ann Hamilton. The free event will be held on April 13, 7pm at the WAG’s Muriel Richardson Auditorium, followed by an onstage conversation with Robert Enright. Featuring two speakers per year, the MATTER lecture series brings significant artists, curators, writers, and cultural commentators from all across the globe to Winnipeg.  

Ann Hamilton’s work is as strong and evocative as it is ephemeral. Her installations are visually stunning, and at once monumental and surprisingly intimate. She is a visual poet of the threshold and a master of scale. The works produce a synaesthetic drift that effortlessly engages the senses. In doing this, she uses a wide range of media combining sculpture, architecture, video, sound, printmaking, photography, and the spoken word.

“The WAG is excited to host legendary American artist Ann Hamilton as our second MATTER speaker,” states Dr. Stephen Borys, WAG Director & CEO. “The series is an incredible opportunity to focus on contemporary art and ideas and spark new conversations in our community.”

Hamilton’s installations often explore an engagement with the feminine, how we relate to touch, materiality, and to the body. Responding directly to the sites they inhabit, her work evidences a sensual understanding of material, which elevates ordinary matter to the ineffable. In her more recent work, language and text are at the metaphoric centre.

“We are honoured to be bringing Ann Hamilton to Winnipeg,” says Meeka Walsh, Editor of BORDER CROSSINGS. “The essential quality of her work and the integrity which infuses it engage and enrapture audiences everywhere.”

Over the past 20 years, Hamilton has shown internationally with more than 67 one-person exhibitions and over 300 group shows. Recent commissions include: habitus (2016) in Philadelphia, a multi venue project that occupied the Fabric Workshop and Museum, and Municipal Pier 9; the event of a thread (2012-13) at the Park Avenue Armory, NY, where she used large swathes of fabric and human motion to populate the industrial-scale space; and in 2018, Hamilton will complete a conceptual project for the Cortland Street subway station in Lower Manhattan where her large woven texts from notable historical documents will be mounted on the walls.

Hamilton received a BFA in textile design from the University of Kansas in 1979 and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1985. She is a Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University in the Department of Art and is currently the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's 2016–17 Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor. Hamilton is the recipient of many prestigious awards including the National Medal of Arts, the MacArthur Fellowship, the NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, among many others, and her work is in numerous major public collections. She represented the United States at the 1999 Venice Biennale, and in 1991 represented the US at the Sao Paulo Biennale.The MATTER lecture series presents one speaker in both spring and fall. The inaugural event last November featured distinguished artist David Salle. Look for the third lecture in fall 2017.

Source: Winnipeg Art Gallery