B.

Richard Hamilton Prints has been brought to New Zealand by Blueport A.C.T. (NZ) Ltd with the assistance of the British Council. The tour has been organised by the NZ Art Gallery Directors' Council with financial assistance from the QEII Arts Council. The exhibition is loaned from Waddington Graphics, London.

The first complete survey to come to New Zealand of the work of the major British artist, Richard Hamilton, will open at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery on October 14.

Richard Hamilton's art derived from popular culture has been acknowledged internationally and he has the reputation of being one of Britain's most innovative, versatile and challenging artists. He has had important exhibitions in major museums in Britain, in Europe and the United States.

From 1956 on Hamilton's works featured the cinema, domestic appliances, cars and clothes. "It took until the mid-50s for artists to realise that the visual world had been altered by the mass media and changed dramatically enough to make it worth looking at again." Essentially the subject was not so much images from commercial culture, but the artifices and techniques by which advertising makes us see them.

However, as the exhibition demonstrates. Hamilton's work is more complex and about far more than the standard definition of pop art. From his early student days onwards idea had primacy over style. "Anything that I respect in art is for its idea rather than for its handling or any other quality . . . " It is this predilection for the setting and solving of specific problems which explains the outward diversity of Hamilton's work.

He is also a skilful and inventive printmaker, an artist who explores a wide variety of printmaking techniques such as etching and engraving, but with screen printing, offset, collotype and photogravure. A final state might include some photogravure, perhaps lithography, several kinds of etching, dye transfer, collage and embossing, burnishing and anything else advised by a valued technician. In the exhibition Richard Hamilton Prints, all of his most well-known works can be seen: My Marilyn (a), The Solomon R. Guggenheim, Swinging London III, Putting On De Stijl and I'm Dreaming Of A Black Christmas (illustrated above). An excellent catalogue accompanies the exhibition, for $32.00.

On October 16 at 3.00 p.m., Jenny Harper, Senior Curator International Art, National Art Gallery, will speak on Richard Hamilton's work at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery.

('Richard Hamilton Prints 1939-1987', Bulletin, No.59, September/October 1988, p.2)