Brigitte Mulholland is thrilled to present Hamish Chapman’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Forget-Me-Nots, opening 1 February. The show marks a return to an early form for the artist: paintings and collaged materials on foam cutouts, often accompanied with collaged frames. Bouquets of flowers, bows, and a semi-autobiographical blond-haired character populate the works, encrusted with objects and frames including jewels, cutouts from pulp gay magazines, glitter, and snail shells. The title of show derives from the ubiquitous flowers typical in England’s bouquets and gardens - a major part of their childhood. The flowers, and all of the objects and ephemera in the show, serve as symbols of remembrance of the artist’s history, like souvenirs or markers of time - each a kind of memento mori. Kitsch and elegant knicknacks are the seemingly opposing factors in the work - a hybrid of the ubiquitousness of gay magazines in the queer scene, and the English obsession with ornamentation. Yet both are actually, as the artist realises, two sides of the same coin. The jagged edges of the foam cutouts, juxtaposed with the elegant imagery mirrors the impulses of both: highbrow and lowbrow, posh and kitsch - which unite to form the unforgettable, deeply personal, work in the exhibition.
Hamish Chapman: Forget-Me-Nots
Current exhibition
