There’s a crushing, sombre atmosphere of paranoia an bleakness in young English painter Lewis Hammond’s work. In his biggest UK show, he’s filled the gallery with demons, depression and disgust in a despairing meditation on how modern society chews you up and spits you out.
The space is dark, Hammond’s paintings barely visible. A woman lies half-nude on a wooden bed as gargoyles and imps hammer menacingly at her door. Men copulate in velvet-lined rooms, mouths are pressed erotically to ears, pornographic images are ambiguously cropped; is that woman mid-orgasm, or mid-death? All the eyes here are blank voids, all the skin is limpid and grey. There are endless mythological and art historical allusions and nods to symbolism and the rococo.
It’s like a gothic modern Leonora Carrington or Odilon Redon for the surveillance age. This isn’t miserable horror surrealism for its own sake, it’s a metaphorical attack on contemporary life. There are paintings of towers of eyes in each room policing the viewers, policing the paintings; Hammond feels contemporary society weighing down on him, surveilling him, exploiting him, and everyone around him too.
I like the paintings just fine, but it’s the atmosphere and ideas that make it good.All this grim, surreal darkness is a manifestation of life in late-stage capitalism, of living under the boot of big business, stuck in a world of horrifying 24-hour news, ceaseless conflict, endless poverty and injustice. Hammond’s paintings are dark and gross and oppressive because the world is dark and gross and oppressive. Maybe his art would be all sunshine and love hearts if life got less grim, but that’s not something that’s happening any time soon.