Luke Hannam 'God's Body & The Devil's Chains'
Fully illustrated catalogue to accompany the solo exhibition 'God's Body & The Devil's Chains' by Luke Hannam at Anima Mundi.
Fully illustrated catalogue to accompany the solo exhibition 'God's Body & The Devil's Chains' by Luke Hannam at Anima Mundi.
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L uke H annam<br />
GOD’S BODY & THE DEVIL’S CHAINS
“Chaos is God’s body. Order is the Devil’s chains”<br />
John Updike
God’s <strong>Body</strong> & <strong>The</strong> Devil’s Chains<br />
“But for him who has seen the chaos, there<br />
is no more hiding, because he knows that<br />
the bottom sways and knows what this<br />
swaying means. He has seen the order and<br />
the disorder of the endless, he knows the<br />
unlawful laws. He knows the sea and can<br />
never forget it.” - Carl Jung<br />
I could say that painting is a conversation<br />
with oneself - a constantly evolving<br />
pathway to a seemingly obvious, but<br />
strangely unknowable destination. What<br />
it can allow you to say clearly, it often<br />
takes away again in a cloud of mystery.<br />
As I write, I am not so foolish as not<br />
to be able to appreciate a potential<br />
discomfort with the flamboyance of<br />
such statements - such truths may<br />
appear grandiose or over the top, but<br />
that’s just the way it is, painting is like<br />
that. <strong>The</strong> exhibition title ‘God’s <strong>Body</strong> &<br />
the Devil’s Chains’ is, perhaps, another<br />
example of this kind of grandiosity, but<br />
it fits and it works and accepts the scale<br />
of the journey.<br />
I was messaged recently by a social<br />
media ‘friend’ that this title sounded<br />
like a Nick Cave song - his latest book,<br />
after all, is called ‘Hope, Faith and<br />
Carnage’. I like this comparison; I like<br />
Nick Cave. I like his courage to wrestle<br />
with the big themes of God, loss, love,<br />
religion, spirituality, no embarrassment<br />
shown, all pretensions embraced.<br />
in conversation with Sean O’Hagen<br />
stated: “<strong>The</strong> word ‘spirituality’ is a<br />
little amorphous for my taste. It can<br />
mean almost anything. Whereas the<br />
word ‘religious’ is just more specific,<br />
perhaps even conservative, has a little<br />
more to do with tradition.” I respond to<br />
the courage of this statement. I may not<br />
understand it fully, but I believe it. I like<br />
to grapple with ideas greater than my<br />
understanding. To lay my hands on that<br />
nagging sense of doubt, and embrace<br />
that clear feeling of being ‘damned if<br />
you do and damned if you don’t’. <strong>The</strong><br />
eternal dysfunction of life itself, the<br />
hostility, the confusion, the demonic<br />
dynamism and the eternal quest for<br />
meaning all offer an impetus.<br />
For me the exhibition title refers to<br />
what Leonard Cohen spoke of as “a<br />
bittersweet”, a need he felt to maintain<br />
a belief that everything springs from<br />
the tension of opposites. Fantasy<br />
occurrences dreams and visions, images<br />
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of what I would like to be yet fear to<br />
become. Painting over the last two<br />
years has been a series of encounters<br />
with what Carl Jung called “a very real<br />
truth.” A facing up to the shadow self,<br />
a synesthesia of mind body and soul, an<br />
encounter with the subconscious. <strong>The</strong><br />
characters in my paintings are all me,<br />
male and female, good and bad, moral<br />
and amoral, earthly and unearthly.<br />
<strong>The</strong>se characters are intuitively drawn<br />
from a theatrical world of fantasy,<br />
myth, religious iconography and<br />
more recently from Jung’s list of the<br />
universal archetypes, which he termed<br />
the collective subconscious.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re has been an exhilarating,<br />
terrifying yet somewhat affirming<br />
realisation that my visual senses are<br />
perhaps helmed, not by the outside<br />
world, but somewhere deep within my<br />
own Psyche. <strong>The</strong> paintings are in a<br />
very real sense manifestations, a call<br />
to being, an attempt to give form to<br />
an internal theatre, a script written by<br />
the Psyche to be followed through in<br />
everyday life. Jung spoke of a demonic<br />
dynamism, the shadows made visible<br />
with the purpose being to integrate the<br />
darker side of ‘Self’ with the so-called<br />
civilised consciousness. My paintings<br />
depict hostility, stasis, desire, cognitive<br />
dissonance, longing, yearning, fulfilment<br />
and emptiness. Titles such as ‘<strong>The</strong><br />
Hypnotist’, ‘<strong>The</strong> Contortionist’, ‘<strong>The</strong><br />
Sleeping Yo-Yo’, ‘<strong>The</strong> Puer Aeturnus’ and<br />
‘<strong>The</strong> Death of the Child’ are deliberate<br />
references to Jung’s research into the<br />
structure of the archetype and have<br />
helped me to recognise and give life to<br />
these psychological and mythological<br />
states of mind. <strong>The</strong> drawings included<br />
in the show, a selected glimpse of my<br />
prolific outpouring, reveal the process<br />
by which these images emerge. Complex,<br />
frenetic, inter woven, entanglements<br />
or contradiction, tension, everything<br />
all at once coexisting. Images on the<br />
cusp of mania or an overwhelmed and<br />
overcrowded inner world at times<br />
claustrophobic and beyond my control,<br />
spill out. I must not fear overstatement,<br />
so I don’t - I embrace it. Scale, complexity,<br />
ideas beyond my own knowledge, all,<br />
in the end, rely on my deep faith in<br />
humanity and firm belief that love will<br />
find a way.<br />
<strong>Luke</strong> <strong>Hannam</strong>, 2023<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Pickpocket<br />
graphite on collage fabriano paper, 30 x 40 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Hypnotism<br />
oil on canvas, 160 x 250 cm<br />
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8
If Truth Be Told<br />
oil on canvas, 160 x 250 cm<br />
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God’s <strong>Body</strong> & <strong>The</strong> Devil’s Chains<br />
oil on canvas, 160 x 250 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Protégé<br />
graphite on collage fabriano paper, 30 x 40 cm<br />
12
<strong>The</strong> Well<br />
graphite on collage fabriano paper, 30 x 40 cm<br />
13
<strong>The</strong> Romanian Bear<br />
graphite on collage fabriano paper, 30 x 40 cm<br />
14
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16
<strong>The</strong> Puella<br />
oil on canvas, 150 x 105 cm<br />
17
<strong>The</strong> Death of the Child<br />
oil on canvas, 180 x 210 cm<br />
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20
<strong>The</strong> Headless Man<br />
oil on canvas, 220 x 150 cm<br />
21
<strong>The</strong> Contortionist<br />
oil & acrylic on canvas, 150 x 110 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Sleeping Yo-Yo<br />
oil on canvas, 120 x 90 cm<br />
25
Study of Bound Hands<br />
graphite on fabriano paper, 30 x 21 cm<br />
26
Study of David’s Hand<br />
graphite on fabriano paper, 30 x 21 cm<br />
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Study of Praying Hands (After Dürer)<br />
graphite on fabriano paper, 21 x 30 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Confidant<br />
oil on canvas, 180 x 210 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Prince (1)<br />
mixed media assemblage, 25 x 19 x 9 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Prince (2)<br />
mixed media assemblage, 27 x 20 x 9 cm<br />
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A Sting in the Tale<br />
graphite on collage fabriano paper, 38 x 40 cm<br />
35
For Those Who Play With the Devil’s Toys<br />
oil on canvas, 230 x 345 cm<br />
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Artemisia’s Voyage<br />
oil on canvas, 180 x 210 cm<br />
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And <strong>The</strong>y Tried Everything in <strong>The</strong>ir Power to Save Him<br />
graphite on collage fabriano paper, 30 x 40 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Crucifix Flute<br />
graphite on collage fabriano paper, 30 x 40 cm<br />
41
<strong>The</strong> Apple Peelers<br />
oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Salvage Hunters<br />
acrylic on canvas, 176 x 220 cm<br />
45
<strong>The</strong> Sea of Emptiness<br />
oil on canvas, 210 x 180 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Silk Roads of Ignorance & Bliss<br />
oil on canvas, 160 x 250 cm<br />
49
<strong>The</strong> Mother of All That Lives<br />
oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm<br />
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Narcissus<br />
graphite on fabriano paper, 30 x 21 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Reflective Echo<br />
graphite on fabriano paper, 30 x 21 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Betrothal<br />
oil & acrylic on canvas, 220 x 176 cm<br />
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Reclining Woman (1)<br />
oil on canvas, 51 x 41 cm<br />
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Reclining Woman (2)<br />
oil on canvas, 51 x 41 cm<br />
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Blue Moon<br />
oil, acrylic & ink on canvas, 255 x 355 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Boy Holding on to His Dreams<br />
acrylic on canvas, 210 x 180 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Puer Aeturnus<br />
oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Silver<br />
oil on canvas, 76 x 61 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Ecstacy<br />
oil on canvas, 66 x 51 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Girl from Hautes Pyrenees<br />
oil on canvas, 46 x 36 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Vision of Bernadette<br />
oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Apparition<br />
acrylic on canvas, 210 x 180 cm<br />
71
<strong>The</strong> Warhorse Returns<br />
oil, acrylic & ink on canvas, 250 x 350 cm<br />
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Biography<br />
<strong>Luke</strong> <strong>Hannam</strong> describes his work as the result<br />
of an ‘ordered chaos’ where poetic paintings<br />
are made ‘in the eye of the storm’, where<br />
creativity spins wildly, through bursts of<br />
impulse around a silent meditative deep well<br />
of meaning. Ideas emerge out of an energetic<br />
dedication to drawing and a relentless desire to<br />
explore images and motifs. His work is instantly<br />
recognisable through his strong punch of<br />
colour and definite use of line which weaves<br />
its way sensuously across the surface, denoting<br />
both the delicacy and strength of the form<br />
and spirit of the subject. <strong>Hannam</strong>’s paintings<br />
expressively offer a singular view on how what<br />
he sees, how he thinks and pivotally how he<br />
feels about the human condition and what lies<br />
beyond our materiality. His work could be seen<br />
to continue the Romantic tradition, embracing<br />
reality and mysticism with the wonder<br />
of experience.<br />
<strong>Luke</strong> <strong>Hannam</strong> was born in 1966 and currently<br />
lives in East Sussex, UK. He studied Fine Art<br />
in the 1980s and whilst others of his generation<br />
faithfully chanted the conceptual mantra of<br />
the time, <strong>Hannam</strong> focussed on perfecting his<br />
expressive drawing skills seeking inspiration<br />
from the earlier masters. Works have been<br />
exhibited and collected internationally,<br />
including the collections of Stefan Simchowitz<br />
and David Kowitz. ‘God’s <strong>Body</strong> & <strong>The</strong> Devil’s<br />
Chains’ is <strong>Hannam</strong>’s second solo exhibition at<br />
Anima Mundi.<br />
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Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with <strong>Luke</strong> <strong>Hannam</strong> ‘God’s <strong>Body</strong> & <strong>The</strong> Devil’s Chains’<br />
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or<br />
by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers<br />
Anima Mundi . Street-an-Pol . St. Ives . Cornwall . +44 (0)1736 793121 . mail@animamundigallery.com . www.animamundigallery.com
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