David Hamlow

Lives and works in Good Thunder, MN, USA

Artist statement

My work addresses the enormous energy—potentially positive or negative—inherent in daily, quotidian action. For over 20 years I have been conserving the packaging and post-consumer ephemera resulting from the majority of my own purchases. These materials are then transformed into modular units that accrue to form both two and three-dimensional elements of large-scale installations. By immersing the viewer in the results of a single career in consumption, I underline the startling negative impact of our current dependence on an unsustainable consumer model, while suggesting a creative—and often collaborative—alternative future. Recent work explores the complexities of personal and communal responsibility: particularly as it relates to the consumption of energy and the creation of waste, the impossibility of solving these issues as an individual, and the challenges of disparate people and groups coming together to create a solution. These explorations have led to an interest in the history of utopian communities and solutions, and recent bodies of work give form to this inquiry.

Artwork