Felicity Hammond The Language of Living

Show Room: The Language of Living

The University of Brighton Galleries,
154-155 Edward Street, Brighton, BN2 0JG

30 April – 29 May
Monday – Sunday: 10am – 5pm
Late Night Thursdays to: 8pm

Felicity Hammond researches the simulated domestic settings and constructed worlds of the digital ‘renders’ that illustrate architects’ proposals. She photographs digitally manipulated images from property developers’ billboards and brochures and prints them directly onto moldable acrylic sheets, which are contorted into beautifully crafted, often large scale, sculptural objects.

For this HOUSE/Photoworks co-commission, Felicity will create a new showroom structure, responding to and exhibited within the University of Brighton’s new home for photography and moving image, situated in a former corporate building. A companion installation is also shown on the hoarding of the former Circus Street Market site in the Circus Street development area. These site-specific installations draw attention to the distinct relationship between the architectural design of educational institutions, the historical value of the area they inhabit, and the future living spaces that will be born out of them. Looking at the role that education plays in urban regeneration, and the impact it has on the socio-economic landscape around it.

With these ‘photo-sculptures’, the artist turns virtual worlds into a visually curious physical space. Hovering between the real and imagined they create an environment that “sits somewhere between the archaic and futuristic, between luxury and decay.”

Hammond explains, “My works challenge the rendered space of architectural luxury-living projections and I use new photography technologies to allow CGI images to enter the physical space. My photo-sculptural works are warped and distorted, adopting the properties of the degraded simulated image.”

Portals: The Language of Living

Hoardings on Circus Street, Brighton, BN2 9QF
30 April – 29 May
FREE (public access)

Portals: The Language of Living uses the historical past of the site to talk about the future generation of the area. Felicity is interested in the transitions of the urban fabric, and her work is a meeting point between the historic and the futuristic.

The circular photographic images placed along the length of the hoarding, use the motifs of fruit and plants as a way of preserving the objects as though artefacts that were once prevalent on this site, a former municipal market. Felicity is interested in the digital world, and so distorts these objects, as a way of referring to the virtual space of the new architectural schemes.

The circular prints also playfully work as small windows or portals into the future of the site that lies behind the hoarding. Hovering between the real and imagined the artwork sits somewhere between the archaic and futuristic, between luxury and decay.