Tom Hemming
Degree: BA Fine Art
University: Byam Shaw School of Art
Graduation Year: 2006
New Blood Art Commentary
See Investable Artists
Tom Hemming holds the space for transition, or rather, holds space in transition when rendering the introspective moment of a figure, reading or in a garden. The artist works from video footage of his close friends and family, which accounts for these works’ unique look. The trajectory of an observation is persistently rendered, marking the patience which allows the identity of those who sit for portraits to be revealed. An identity which turns out to be multiple and shifting: as much non-identity as identity. Finished works and studies for those works are both available, with the boundaries blurred between the finished, singular work and the unfinished, multiple studies.
These contemporary oil paintings chime with those by Jenny Saville, the Young British Artist as conceptually driven as the others of that famous cohort, but primarily interested in the human form and flesh – and significantly paints from photographs. In Tom’s works the collateral of the image – the ripples in the field of vision – are born from the contrasting metaphysics of the video and painting medium: the former medium that posits the motion of an object, the latter the stillness. The artist combines these with a startling, morphing effect. In his monochromatic works a film of colour wavers between enhancing and obscuring the scene. His portraits are like stills of a movie reel, transposed and transpersonal: the multiple stills overlaid, and splayed like fingers of a hand; the hand that paints motion into stillness and stillness into motion.
Artist Statement
In my paintings I attempt to express movement. Not so much the movement of a figure or the mechanics of an object passing through space but more the passage of time made visible by a lack of stillness. I see the fluctuation of figures and objects in my paintings as a means to explore the nature of human perception and to engage in a dialogue that has existed throughout the history of painting. Avoiding the description of specific movements or actions I intentionally frustrate the reading of any direct chronology or linear narrative, preferring instead to pursue an emotional intensity though the accumulation of rapidly made gestural marks and constant re-working. My paintings are a deeply personal account of the world around me. All of the figures are either close friends or family members and the paintings are made from video footage I shoot in circumstances where they are relaxed and unguarded. Although the identity of the subject is important to me in the process of making the paintings I don’t necessarily consider it important in the outcome and I don’t consider the paintings to be portraits, rather an attempt to record the sensations of a specific moment in time.
Solo Exhibitions
(2022) The Garden, Lewisham Arthouse, London
Group Exhibitions
(2021) Resolution/Revolution, Lewisham Arthouse, London
(2021) Time, No Format Gallery, London
(2020) Only Human, The Nutshell, Winchester
(2019) Amalgamation, The Cello Factory, London
(2018) Eyeball Pleasers, Lewisham Arthouse, London