Exhibitions
Events
On display
Ronnie van Hout on Hammond
Bill Hammond Radio On 1985. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, presented by the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, Wellington, 1990
Talk
Past event
Meet at the front desk
Free
Hailing from Christchurch but now based in Melbourne, multimedia artist and arch-humourist Ronnie van Hout will give a floortalk on the work in Bill Hammond: Playing the Drums, with special reference to his earlier noisier work, its context, and the reception of New Zealand art.
This exhibition samples work from across the spectrum of Hammond’s career – early and late works, big and small – and includes several little-seen works from local private collections, including the artist’s own. Van Hout’s strange Antarctic fiction The Thing (2018), a recent addition to the Gallery’s collection, is currently on display in Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary.
Related
Exhibition
Bill Hammond: Playing the Drums
19 January 2020
A selection of work by Aotearoa New Zealand's favourite painter/drummer
Exhibition
Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary
8 March 2020
Time and the contemporary in recent works from the collection
Commentary
Doctor Jazz Stomp and the Webb Lane Sound
“Bill Hammond is long, lithe and tired, and was born several years ago. Is currently pursuing a Fine Arts course and trying hard to catch up. He is deeply interested in the aesthetic implications of sleep, sports the Rat-Chewed Look in coiffures for ’68, and dreams about blind mice in bikinis. He has never been known to sing outside the confines of his bedroom. Shows a marked but languid preference for the subtle textural nuances and dynamic shadings of washboard, cowbell, woodblocks, claves, cymbal, spoons, thimbles, tambourine, and the palms of the hands in percussive contact.”