• BillHammondinstall2007-38.jpg

    Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning, installation view City Gallery Wellington, 2007. Photo: Neil Price.

  • BillHammond2007-1.jpg

    Bill Hammond, Whistlers, Mothers, Sticks and Stones, 2000. Collection of J. B. Gibbs Trust.

  • BillHammondinstall2007-29.jpg

    Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning, Installation view City Gallery Wellington, 2007. Photo: Neil Price.

Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning

17 November 2007 - 10 February 2008 in the Entire Gallery

This survey exhibition of paintings by Bill Hammond features works from the 1980s to the current day, all sourced from private collections here and overseas. The exhibition is divided into five thematic groupings that are also largely chronological: Mix Master, Endangered Species, Zoomorphic, Limbo Ledge, Jingle Jangle Morning.

Known for his sense of humour and irony, Bill Hammond occupies a unique place in New Zealand art history, with a language and technique that is wholly his own. Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning is centred on the theme of music in Hammond’s work; the title comes from the Bob Dylan song Hey Mr Tambourine Man but is also the name of one of Hammond’s opulent paintings. A practicing musician himself, music has been a constant throughout Hammond’s career and he speaks of his paintings as being like instrumentals “laid out flat”. Curator Jennifer Hay says Hammond is inspired by the energy of performance and that his work “samples and mixes elements of popular culture in an ironic take on the world.”

Hammond is renowned for his investigation of the bird motif. He became hooked on them after a trip to the Auckland Islands with fellow artists, among them Laurence Aberhart, in 1989. Confronted with “birdland - a paradise free from predators” as he described it, he began to paint a new race of sentient bird creatures into his works.

Public Programmes

Opening day curator's insight, Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning
Saturday 17 November

The Gordon H. Brown lecture
Friday 30 November

Lecture by Ron Brownson: W. D. Hammond's Wonderful and Terrifying Worlds
Wednesday 23 January

Lecture by Ross Galbreath: Looking for Buller
wednesday 30 January

Principal Sponsor

                            

Exhibition Partner