Bill Hammond Jingle Jangle Morning (detail) 2006. Acrylic on linen. Collection of Chris Deutscher and Karen Woodbury, Melbourne, Australia
Bill Hammond Jingle Jangle Morning (detail) 2006. Acrylic on linen. Collection of Chris Deutscher and Karen Woodbury, Melbourne, Australia
This exhibition is now closed
The long-awaited exhibition is a spectacular survey of more than two decades of work by one of New Zealand's leading contemporary painters.
Jingle Jangle Morning, taken from a verse in Bob Dylan’s song Mr Tambourine Man, is the title of an opulent Bill Hammond painting depicting majestic avian musicians and serpentine creatures who sing, dance and play instruments upon a floating world of golden clouds and mountainous divides. It is also the title for Christchurch Art Gallery’s long-awaited exhibition of more than two decades of Hammond’s work and the accompanying catalogue, designed by Aaron Beehre, with texts by Jennifer Hay, Ron Brownson, Chris Knox and Laurence Aberhart.
Bill Hammond is one of New Zealand’s most influential contemporary artists. He was born in Christchurch in 1947 and attended the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts. During the 1970s, he worked in a sign factory, made jewellery and designed and manufactured wooden toys before returning fulltime to painting in 1981. Birds first began to populate Hammond’s paintings after he visited the Auckland Islands in 1989, as part of the Art in the Subantarctic project. The three-week trip to the remote, windswept islands, where the severity of the climate has allowed little human impact on the natural environment was something of a revelation.
In an interview with Gregory O’Brien for Lands and Deeds (Godwit, Auckland, 1996), Hammond spoke of the islands as a kind of lost world, ruled over by beak and claw: 'The Auckland Islands are like New Zealand before people got here. It’s bird land.'
Bill Hammond’s compositions encompass humour, beauty, and lyricism while reflecting a unique expression of New Zealand’s cultural landscape. This spectacular exhibition includes early music inspired paintings, as well as Hammond’s Walter Buller series painted after his visit to the sub-Antarctic, through to the startling zoomorphic paintings, ancestral studies and recent work that takes the extinct Giant New Zealand Eagle as its theme. Hammond’s luscious palette of inky blues, his signature use of emerald green and gold and his endlessly inventive combination of anthropomorphic birds, horses and hybrid creatures will offer viewers a unique insight into the oeuvre of this singular artist.
Principal Exhibition Sponsor: Ernst & Young.
The exhibition and accompanying publication are supported by the Friends of Christchurch Art Gallery.
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Date:
20 July – 22 October 2007 -
Curator:
Jennifer Hay -
Exhibition number:
774
Collection works in this exhibition
Related reading: Bill Hammond
film
Bill Hammond - Living Large 6
An introduction to Bill Hammond's Living Large 6 (1995), narrated by New Zealand actor Miranda Harcourt.
audio
Bill Hammond - Fall of Icarus
An introduction to Bill Hammond's Fall of Icarus (1995), narrated by New Zealand actor Sam Neill.
Exhibition
Bill Hammond: Playing the Drums
3 August 2019 – 19 January 2020
A selection of work by Aotearoa New Zealand's favourite painter/drummer
Exhibition
De Lautour / Greig / Hammond
2 February – 10 March 2013
An exciting opportunity to see new work by leading Canterbury artists Tony de Lautour, Jason Greig and Bill Hammond
Notes
RIP Bill
All of us at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū were very saddened to hear of the death of Bill Hammond over the weekend. Bill’s contribution to the art of Aotearoa New Zealand was original and unforgettable and he occupied a special, beloved place within the arts communities of Christchurch and Lyttelton.
Notes
A Bird in the Hand
The Christchurch Art Gallery Foundation is honoured to assist the Gallery in acquiring Bill Hammond's Bone Yard Open Home for its permanent collection. But, we need your help!
Notes
De Lautour / Greig / Hammond
An exhibition of recent work by Tony de Lautour, Jason Greig and Bill Hammond opens at our NG space on Madras street tomorrow. These artists have had limited opportunities to show their work since the quakes so this exhibition is well worth a visit if you have the time.
Here's a taster of some of their work.
Commentary
The Edge of the Sea
A vision of New Zealand’s past from 1995:
Europeans first imagined New Zealand as “a garden and a pasture in which the best elements of British society might grow into an ideal nation”... When the smoke of the colonists’ fires cleared at the end of the 19th century, New Zealand had become a different country. Māori had lost their most precious life-support system. Only in the hilliest places did the forest still come down to the sea. Huge slices of the ancient ecosystem were missing, evicted and extinguished. Our histories, however, have had neither the sense of place nor ecological consciousness to explain what has happened.
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.”
Article
A miscellany of observable illustrations
Romantic notions of gothic leanings, the legacy of Tony Fomison, devotion to rock sub-genres and an eye to the past are familiar and sound reasons to group Tony de Lautour, Jason Greig and Bill Hammond together in one exhibition, but De Lautour / Greig / Hammond is to feature new and recent work. Could all this change? What nuances will be developed or abandoned? Will rich veins be further mined? We can only speculate and accept that even the artists concerned can't answer these questions. For the artist, every work is a new endeavour, a new beginning. What may appear to the public, the critic or the art historian as a smooth, seamless flow of images is for them an unpredictable process where the only boundaries are those that they choose to invent.
