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ART<br />
....................................<br />
Felicity Hammond<br />
Sculptural photographer<br />
Felicity Hammond<br />
is all smiles when we<br />
meet outside the<br />
newly-acquired<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> University<br />
building on<br />
Edward Street,<br />
opposite the old<br />
Amex Wedding<br />
Cake. “I love this<br />
space,” she says,<br />
pointing out the<br />
interesting use<br />
of pastel yellow and orange inside and out, and<br />
telling me that she’s been upstairs to explore, and<br />
though the downstairs is all flash and smooth<br />
and new and shiny the upper floors still haven’t<br />
been refurbished from their days in use by Amex,<br />
and it’s all old furniture and peeling paint, and it<br />
makes her feel like the place is decaying before<br />
it’s even been completed. Which she loves.<br />
Felicity is wearing paint-spattered cords, a check<br />
shirt and a baseball cap, and has a drill in her<br />
hand. Having arrived earlier the same morning,<br />
she’s busy installing one of the two site-specific<br />
pieces she’s been commissioned to produce<br />
by HOUSE. Felicity is notionally a photographer,<br />
but that allows for a wide brief nowadays,<br />
and what she’s preparing for <strong>May</strong> is more of a<br />
sculpture, with photographic elements. ‘Site<br />
specificity’ (I stumble over the word, she doesn’t)<br />
is extremely important to her work, she tells me:<br />
both her pieces will respond in different ways to<br />
the other site, on Circus Street, and the fact that<br />
there used to be a fruit market there.<br />
These two works, like much of her recent stuff,<br />
have been influenced by architectural ‘renders’:<br />
artists’ impressions of what new developments<br />
will look like, often blown up large on hoardings<br />
in front of the building site in question. “At<br />
Photo by Ellie Rose<br />
first glance,” she<br />
says, “they seem<br />
to be portraying a<br />
perfect world, but<br />
if you look closely<br />
you see that they<br />
are pixelated and<br />
warped and the<br />
perspective is all<br />
wrong… <strong>May</strong>be<br />
this is pointing to<br />
the future of the<br />
city, and the fact<br />
that the buildings they are portraying are not<br />
sustainable. The digital ruins of the render are<br />
pointing to the future ruin of the city.”<br />
“In a way this is an emotional response to my<br />
home territory,” she continues. “Back in time my<br />
father lost his job in a factory due to the rise of<br />
technology making his trade obsolete. I always<br />
associated this with his decline in health.”<br />
I’ve disturbed her from her work of putting<br />
together the installation that’s going into the<br />
Edward Street site, which will be ‘a 3D photo<br />
collage, made of industrial materials… two metres<br />
wide, four metres forty high… an immersive<br />
space like a room made of panels.” The materials<br />
she’s using will reflect the fact the building is still<br />
being refurbished: “I’ll include expanding foam,<br />
and insulation tape within the sculptural work<br />
to point to the fact that the building has worked<br />
hard to maintain its exposed features.”<br />
It’s impossible to envisage exactly what she<br />
means, even though I’m familiar with her previous<br />
work, which makes me all the more intrigued<br />
to see the finished version. She’s all smiles again,<br />
as I take my leave, but there’s a determination in<br />
her eye: she’s got plenty to do.<br />
Alex Leith<br />
House Festival, housefestival.org<br />
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