| English artist Sabrina Rowan Hamilton's work is influenced by the writings of Gaston Bachelard's 'Poetics of Space', in which he uses the metaphor of home as a starting point for journeys through memory and imagination. Haunted by the loss of her own home in Morocco, she became interested in how to make memory visible. Like an old photograph or the pages of a diary she started painting black and white, the history of the painting clearly visible. Stripes, stacks, blocks of flats - the passing of time captured in a vertical stucture. Past, present and future caught in a single moment. |
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Although structures, scaffolding or the façade of a building have been the inspiration for her recent work, what really interests Sabrina are the emotional lives of those living behind closed doors. For the spaces they inhabit are filled with their silent histories - memories, thoughts and feelings. The walls that surround them may provide temporary security, yet it is in their internal world where true freedom is to be found and suggest the place that we are all searching for, whether consciously or subconsciously, a place of security, comfort and peace. Sabrina's work is about the search for this place.
Sabrina Rowan-Hamilton graduated from the City & Guilds Art School in London and has twice been a finalist for the much-coveted Nat West Art Prize and winner of several other mainstream prizes. |
