Luke Hannam 'God's Body & The Devil's Chains'

L uke H annam 

GOD’S BODY & THE DEVIL’S CHAINS

“Chaos is God’s body. Order is the Devil’s chains” 

John Updike

God’s Body & The Devil’s Chains 

“But for him who has seen the chaos, there 

is no more hiding, because he knows that 

the bottom sways and knows what this 

swaying means. He has seen the order and 

the disorder of the endless, he knows the 

unlawful laws. He knows the sea and can 

never forget it.” - Carl Jung 

I could say that painting is a conversation 

with oneself - a constantly evolving 

pathway to a seemingly obvious, but 

strangely unknowable destination. What 

it can allow you to say clearly, it often 

takes away again in a cloud of mystery. 

As I write, I am not so foolish as not 

to be able to appreciate a potential 

discomfort with the flamboyance of 

such statements - such truths may 

appear grandiose or over the top, but 

that’s just the way it is, painting is like 

that. The exhibition title ‘God’s Body & 

the Devil’s Chains’ is, perhaps, another 

example of this kind of grandiosity, but 

it fits and it works and accepts the scale 

of the journey. 

I was messaged recently by a social 

media ‘friend’ that this title sounded 

like a Nick Cave song - his latest book, 

after all, is called ‘Hope, Faith and 

Carnage’. I like this comparison; I like 

Nick Cave. I like his courage to wrestle 

with the big themes of God, loss, love, 

religion, spirituality, no embarrassment 

shown, all pretensions embraced. 

in conversation with Sean O’Hagen 

stated: “The word ‘spirituality’ is a 

little amorphous for my taste. It can 

mean almost anything. Whereas the 

word ‘religious’ is just more specific, 

perhaps even conservative, has a little 

more to do with tradition.” I respond to 

the courage of this statement. I may not 

understand it fully, but I believe it. I like 

to grapple with ideas greater than my 

understanding. To lay my hands on that 

nagging sense of doubt, and embrace 

that clear feeling of being ‘damned if 

you do and damned if you don’t’. The 

eternal dysfunction of life itself, the 

hostility, the confusion, the demonic 

dynamism and the eternal quest for 

meaning all offer an impetus. 

For me the exhibition title refers to 

what Leonard Cohen spoke of as “a 

bittersweet”, a need he felt to maintain 

a belief that everything springs from 

the tension of opposites. Fantasy 

occurrences dreams and visions, images 

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of what I would like to be yet fear to 

become. Painting over the last two 

years has been a series of encounters 

with what Carl Jung called “a very real 

truth.” A facing up to the shadow self, 

a synesthesia of mind body and soul, an 

encounter with the subconscious. The 

characters in my paintings are all me, 

male and female, good and bad, moral 

and amoral, earthly and unearthly. 

These characters are intuitively drawn 

from a theatrical world of fantasy, 

myth, religious iconography and 

more recently from Jung’s list of the 

universal archetypes, which he termed 

the collective subconscious. 

There has been an exhilarating, 

terrifying yet somewhat affirming 

realisation that my visual senses are 

perhaps helmed, not by the outside 

world, but somewhere deep within my 

own Psyche. The paintings are in a 

very real sense manifestations, a call 

to being, an attempt to give form to 

an internal theatre, a script written by 

the Psyche to be followed through in 

everyday life. Jung spoke of a demonic 

dynamism, the shadows made visible 

with the purpose being to integrate the 

darker side of ‘Self’ with the so-called 

civilised consciousness. My paintings 

depict hostility, stasis, desire, cognitive 

dissonance, longing, yearning, fulfilment 

and emptiness. Titles such as ‘The 

Hypnotist’, ‘The Contortionist’, ‘The 

Sleeping Yo-Yo’, ‘The Puer Aeturnus’ and 

‘The Death of the Child’ are deliberate 

references to Jung’s research into the 

structure of the archetype and have 

helped me to recognise and give life to 

these psychological and mythological 

states of mind. The drawings included 

in the show, a selected glimpse of my 

prolific outpouring, reveal the process 

by which these images emerge. Complex, 

frenetic, inter woven, entanglements 

or contradiction, tension, everything 

all at once coexisting. Images on the 

cusp of mania or an overwhelmed and 

overcrowded inner world at times 

claustrophobic and beyond my control, 

spill out. I must not fear overstatement, 

so I don’t - I embrace it. Scale, complexity, 

ideas beyond my own knowledge, all, 

in the end, rely on my deep faith in 

humanity and firm belief that love will 

find a way. 

Luke Hannam, 2023 

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The Pickpocket 

graphite on collage fabriano paper, 30 x 40 cm 

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The Hypnotism 

oil on canvas, 160 x 250 cm 

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If Truth Be Told 


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God’s Body & The Devil’s Chains 


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The Protégé 


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The Well 


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The Romanian Bear 


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The Puella 


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The Death of the Child 


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The Headless Man 


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The Contortionist 

oil & acrylic on canvas, 150 x 110 cm 

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The Sleeping Yo-Yo 


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Study of Bound Hands 

graphite on fabriano paper, 30 x 21 cm 

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Study of David’s Hand 


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Study of Praying Hands (After Dürer) 


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The Confidant 


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The Prince (1) 

mixed media assemblage, 25 x 19 x 9 cm 

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The Prince (2) 

mixed media assemblage, 27 x 20 x 9 cm 

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A Sting in the Tale 


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For Those Who Play With the Devil’s Toys 


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Artemisia’s Voyage 


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And They Tried Everything in Their Power to Save Him 


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The Crucifix Flute 


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The Apple Peelers 


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The Salvage Hunters 

acrylic on canvas, 176 x 220 cm 

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The Sea of Emptiness 


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The Silk Roads of Ignorance & Bliss 


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The Mother of All That Lives 


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Narcissus 


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The Reflective Echo 


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The Betrothal 

oil & acrylic on canvas, 220 x 176 cm 

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Reclining Woman (1) 


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Reclining Woman (2) 


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Blue Moon 

oil, acrylic & ink on canvas, 255 x 355 cm 

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The Boy Holding on to His Dreams 


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The Puer Aeturnus 


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The Silver 


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The Ecstacy 


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The Girl from Hautes Pyrenees 


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The Vision of Bernadette 


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The Apparition 


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The Warhorse Returns 

oil, acrylic & ink on canvas, 250 x 350 cm 

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Biography 

Luke Hannam describes his work as the result 

of an ‘ordered chaos’ where poetic paintings 

are made ‘in the eye of the storm’, where 

creativity spins wildly, through bursts of 

impulse around a silent meditative deep well 

of meaning. Ideas emerge out of an energetic 

dedication to drawing and a relentless desire to 

explore images and motifs. His work is instantly 

recognisable through his strong punch of 

colour and definite use of line which weaves 

its way sensuously across the surface, denoting 

both the delicacy and strength of the form 

and spirit of the subject. Hannam’s paintings 

expressively offer a singular view on how what 

he sees, how he thinks and pivotally how he 

feels about the human condition and what lies 

beyond our materiality. His work could be seen 

to continue the Romantic tradition, embracing 

reality and mysticism with the wonder 

of experience. 

Luke Hannam was born in 1966 and currently 

lives in East Sussex, UK. He studied Fine Art 

in the 1980s and whilst others of his generation 

faithfully chanted the conceptual mantra of 

the time, Hannam focussed on perfecting his 

expressive drawing skills seeking inspiration 

from the earlier masters. Works have been 

exhibited and collected internationally, 

including the collections of Stefan Simchowitz 

and David Kowitz. ‘God’s Body & The Devil’s 

Chains’ is Hannam’s second solo exhibition at 

Anima Mundi. 

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Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with Luke Hannam ‘God’s Body & The Devil’s Chains’ 

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Anima Mundi . Street-an-Pol . St. Ives . Cornwall . +44 (0)1736 793121 . mail@animamundigallery.com . www.animamundigallery.com

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Luke Hannam 'God's Body & The Devil's Chains'

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