Fusion - Artist Alexander James Hamilton In conversation with author Emma Coccioli

On the sphere, the infinite, and a spiritual re-awakening

EC — Your blooming spheres are literally wonderful. At first glance I was starstruck by the beauty of these strange “creatures” that seem to belong to our familiar environment and at the same time to have been dropped from the sky by some gentle aliens. Soon after I perceived something arcane about them, and started wondering what they are telling us. Each is different from the other, and maybe each has a slightly different message for us?

AJH — These works all centre around one theme: to reinforce a belief that society is in need of a spiritual re-awakening with nature upon which our future is co-dependent. The sphere represents mother earth. As a geometric shape from all directions it represents to me the infinite.

AJH — I think of Dutch artist Maurits Escher, who saw an infinite plane in the sphere’s surface. Also representing unity, completeness and the universe. The environment and our encroachment into it has been a constant theme for me to explore in my work for over three decades.

Beauty at the precipice

AJH — I am fascinated by the concept of the untold billions of specific events that led to us being here at all, how nature is continually evolving all around us. These floral forms are each so very different. From those which seem to be giving birth and giving light, to those at the very precipice of life itself, at the end; shifting form. It brings to mind the moment that we each have here and now; as life is continually renewing itself, each moment so very different than before.

AJH — For me this is an important exploration: how to present a form so full of beauty and yet at a point of simultaneous tragedy; the way in which we are destroying the air and polluting our rivers and oceans at an ever-increasing rate.

AJH — They are each very unique, you are quite right Emma; as indeed we are. With that uniqueness of our experience here on earth comes a responsibility that we each in our unique way reduce our footprint so as not to plight the experience of those that are to come after our existence has passed.

‘Untitled Plate 8080’, from Fusion, dated 2012.

How the works are made

EC — After getting lost in the contemplation of the floral spheres, I was also intrigued by the mystery of their creation technically speaking. Do you think you could give us some clues?

AJH — The flowers are all studio grown from specific and ancient specimens of Allium (onion) historically cultivated since the early ages of humanity. This species in particular intrigues me as it is human activity that is causing so many acts of ecocide; the timeframe of onion cultivation and human interference in the natural world seem to be in harmony from a timeline perspective.

AJH — I also introduce other forms of the sphere into the series, from circular mirror surfaces to water formations; they are all included in the process of experimentation that created these works; they all occur in camera.

AJH — The sparks of energy come from a mix of ground volatile metal filings. I use a holding medium which can help retard or excite the process. I have also used a low voltage / high amperage electrical spark; but as the scale of the project unfolded it became too dangerous in a black water tank.

‘Untitled Plate 01566’, from Fusion, dated 2020.

Origins, responsibility, and long arcs

EC — The original ideas and intentions you had when you conceived the project Fusion and began to work on it have undergone any changes?

AJH — These themes have been a recurring subject in my work for over 30 years, circling the underwater world, sustainability and ecocide. The protection of global waters is threaded through all my works. I started this series back in 2010 and revisited the project on the 10-year anniversary.

AJH — The works were created as a reaction against the BP Deepwater Horizon incident, where oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April 2010. Much of my work is in direct contact with the environment, from years working underwater on coral reefs to the solitude of a renaissance style of studio practice.

AJH — In the series Visions from the shoreline I documented the jewel-like islands in the atolls of the Maldives over a 30-year period, including above and below the waterline creations. I collected detritus from coral reefs and created texts, letters and camera-less works on large-format film plates, using only the sun and natural interventions.

Makers Place and the material afterlife

AJH — This particular project over the full 30 year period has gained full circle status for me just recently, with the July 2021 opening of 'Makers Place'. The first carbon neutral plastic and aluminium recycling facility in the Maldives, The building is designed & completed and the custom made machines that were all hand built to survive a difficult island work life; are all now fully operational. This was enabled working with the Soneva Namoona Foundation who purchased a complete collection of donated artworks and 100% of the funds went directly into funding the completion of this first community changing facility.

AJH — The facility is an artists studio where production has already seen island cleanup operations from the area to bring in more raw materials, single use packaging to be re-born into a better end of life than simply being dumped in the ocean, buried or worse still burned. It is a terrible plight for small island nations that I am proud to be able to help. Here is the first piece from the studio titled ‘Drink Less’ made from over 1000 beach cleanup coca cola cans.

Drink Less, made from recycled beach cleanup Coca-Cola aluminium cans.

AJH — So to answer your question in full, I think no. There have been no changes in the 11 years it took me from start to finish on this Fusion project, its the same conversation; I just think have a wider vocabulary at my disposal as my studio knowledge continues to expand. introducing water and glass was the only technical change.

Poems, music, and the sun as measure

EC — The sun, creator of life on our planet, and a transfigured presence at the heart of these floral microcosms, is also indissolubly linked to our experience of caducity, a theme that inspired poets of all times all over the world. To me an Italian, there comes immediately to mind two splendid poems both connected to the sun. The first, attributed to Catullus in a later English version by Sir Walter Raleigh:

The sun may set and rise, but we, contrariwise, sleep, after our short light, one everlasting night.

EC — The other, Ed è subito sera, by Salvatore Quasimodo, is two thousand years younger:

Everyone stands alone at the heart of the world pierced by a ray of sunlight, and suddenly it is evening

EC — Coming back to your work, can you recall any such poems of your background that may have influenced you to some extent?

AJH — My hands and mind are always too busy in the studio to take the time to read as much as I would have liked over the years. Music however has I feel helped to fill that void; my work is very much inspired by such classical masters as Jean Sibelius and Franz Listz. I always have music on in the studio, but never music with lyrics. I enjoy the spatial landscapes music can create. Modern masters such as Ryuichi Sakamoto is a regular to help me experience a broad spread of powerful emotions during the long hours of monastic work solitude.

AJH — Thank you for the reminder of Sir Walter Raleighs works, I refreshed my memory after reading your question, but one such poem that does spring to mind for me is Dante Alighieri, Paradiso “Love, that moves the sun and the other stars” I am glad to hold that thought close.

AJH — I am hopelessly in love with a memory. An echo from another time, another place.

Excerpt from a film series exploring black hole and dark matter theory, created entirely in camera. From Fusion, dated 2021.

‘Untitled Plate 01520’, from Fusion, dated 2020.

EC — You wrote that the Big Bang is also a powerful actor behind the wings. Again, the theme of the origin and the end of the universe and that of the relation man-physical world commit and fascinate scientists, artists and the man in the streets as well. Nor it could be otherwise. For example, in 2008 there took place an important international exhibition, where eight artists, Alberto Di Fabio, Domenico Bianchi, Dellavedova; Shahzia Sikander, James Turrell, Robert Longo, Ross Bleckner, Peter Halley, ‘reflect on the cosmos, science and the infinite’. And, indeed, it was called The Big Bang! From the immense field of science-fiction I pick a very particular film, Last Night (by the Canadian director Don McKellar) that vividly impressed me and still gives me the shivers. It’s so unusual, it describes, in a detailed realistic yet poetic way how people spend their last hours before midnight, deadline of the instant death foretold of everything; and there are no aliens, the villain here, the agent of The End, discovered at the end of the film, is none other than the creator of life, the sun! Regarding Fusion, could you recall for us any similar artistic ‘encounters’ that you recognise as having deeply impressed or influenced you in its gestation?

AJH — I think my early underwater experiments have clearly had a lasting impression on me, that still reverberate constantly to this day. Many of these early underwater installations were well offshore and difficult to swim to, so photography was used to fix and extend the work to allow others access to its reasoning. The decision that water was to be my medium as an artist was firmly set in those early days; it was difficult work and often dangerous. Free diving alone offshore

EC — Roundness characterises your ‘creatures’. Why this choice? Maybe because the circular shape alludes to the idea of cyclicity of processes in all the main realms of reality, from nature and history to the human existence? Many thinkers and artists, in fact, believed in the “eternal return” since antiquity, and in more recent times, in the face of the new developments of thermodynamics implying the thermal death of the universe, Frederich Nietzsche reshaped the idea in his own way. A famous passage from The Gay Science reads: “The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again and you with it, speck of dust!». Edvard Munch, the painter, shared a similarly grim view, symbolised by the mandrake, or’ blood flower’, represented in his picture The Flower of Pain. At the same time, some say, by incorporating the law of Lavoisier: “Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed” these philosophical/artistic formulations do express the amor fati, the love of fate, and that of life infinitely repeating itself. Do you recognise any sense in these connections?

AJH — Yes the love of fate, I had not thought of the Edvard Munchs mandrake like this before. Yes of course it is a belief for me that nothing ever dies, it is merely energy moving from one form or place to another. A basic principle of the universe. With loss or pain everything you feel within can be transformed. Of course it is a strong theme threaded in my work and a subject explored throughout art history; its exploration can indeed lead to untrodden paths and painful conclusions. Or it can be transformed into renewed vitality through your work Fate and its unending circle, for me the definition of my success would be time.. time to complete the work and do it justice.

EC — Frailty and transience have often been represented in the history of art, from Caravaggio to Bacon, just to mention two great protagonists of the past. Among contemporaries, what comes first to my mind thinking of creation and destruction, is Yves Klein’s work with fire. Are there any artists who have addressed this matter in an original way who have somehow inspired you?

AJH — Caravaggio has been a remarkable inspiration for me as the creator of the first important still life ‘Basket of fruit’ the sheer beauty of its use of light and elegant form, the colour and detail revealing ever more. His figurative works explored and developed the style of tenebrism leading in later years to chiaroscuro where dramatic reveals from black become a dominant theme. ‘The taking of christ’ for example or ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes’ the intensity of these paintings exist as boldly as they do because of the very blacks from where they come. Black is so full of potential, black is the dominant colour of the universe; all things come from it. It is a clear and striking element throughout my work over the decades. from Vanitas I can recall ‘Grace’ the richness in these period flowers again are brought so alive because of the deepest of black water they are depicted in. Once the photograph is taken and the analogue plate developed, the scene is immediately destroyed. The photograph being the only documentary record of it ever having taken place.

‘Grace’ from Vanitas, 2008–ongoing.

AJH — During my time in London, American artist Nancy Fouts also influenced me a greatly. If you are familiar with her work you will know the playful view of the world she had; giving birth to new ideas through re-interpreting everyday household objects. This freedom to create regardless of materiality allowed me to continue to have confidence in my own approach; exploring each and every material and process I possibly could, never restricting myself to any one set method, always allowing the work to expand beyond its own horizon.

AJH — My studio approach is moving with frailty and transience as works, like acid flavoured ping pong balls bouncing and colliding around the space. ideas, objects and texts are constantly placed under or inside one another. Overlapping, folded, reconfigured and examined the results from which were simple re-inserted into the process, one unique artefact evolving into another. Time itself folding as each artworks story was recorded. Once created its theme is immediately destroyed by moving quickly in another direction. I think this brings us back to that an onion, constantly unfolding new layers.

EC — These ephemeral flowery globes of yours are astonishingly beautiful. But even the tender ordinary dandelion we blow on is full of charming grace. Anyway, the beauty of impermanent things, or the impermanence of beautiful things, has always been celebrated in many ways, but maybe there’s one old touching poem that says it all, at least to me. It was written in 1599 by François de Malherbe, to console a friend for the loss of his young daughter.

But she was of the world where the most beautiful things
Have the worst fate;
And rose that she was, she lived what roses live,
The space of one morning.
(“Consolation à M. du Périer”)

EC — Could you reveal to us what verses or words or images are enshrined in your mind in relation to your experience or feeling?

AJH — Loss is a recurring theme in my work and was painfully explored in ‘Witness’ from ‘A beautiful announcement of death’ dated 2012

‘Witness’ Martyred Ophelia, from ‘A beautiful announcement of death’, dated 2012.
Chromogenic print, 180 cm x 135 cm. Edition of II.

EC — The smoke emanating from flowers is another element that recurs in some of your works subtly alluding, perhaps, to an early stage of destruction, whereas Adam Fuss, for example, makes it the only gigantic character of one of his series. Being not, in fact, an agent but a by-product of destruction, in the artistic vision smoke becomes mainly a metaphor and a kind of messenger of the end underway. With this in mind, I can’t help thinking of the powerful initial scene of the film Apocalypse now with smoking clouds rising and enveloping the vast palm tree forest while the Doors sing their tragically enchanting song The End. And then there’s the dust, an endless source for artists and poets…And for you, were there any special suggestions, and from which muses, in the creation of Fusion?

AJH — Smoke for me is such an emblematic sign of energy transferring material into an entirely new form, like a butterfly. I believe nothing ever dies its is just energy moving from one form to another. The cadaver in the ground feeding its surrounding life. the burning of material into smoke, energy moving constantly. I try always to make the studio workflow with the same natural flow of energy. One form or creation transforms into another as each material, canvas, an analogue film plate, each overlaps into the other to take the work into new and uncharted territory. I like to work this way; not knowing what is around the corner.

‘Untitled Plate 8502’ from Fusion, dated 2009.

I must confess to also being fascinated with, and constantly searching for the latest in science and nature based research imagery. For me these serve as primers to new ways of interpreting specific and recurring threads of thought; for example the wonderful resources available online with Nasa including the recent Caseni images that I have been studying closely, of course 10 years ago I explored Fusion purely with floral spheres, the new works definitely look more ‘interstellar in their form’ and I can certainly attest to their origins in my mind as stemming from these new scientific images of exploration.

For example below the Ice Mountains on the outer rings of Saturn are calculated to stand over 5 klms in height and literally thousands of klms in length, just floating around in space held in this incredible formation and orbital geometric configuration. So much new and exciting imagery and information is coming to us right now; these have undoubtably been a primer and source of inspiration in these new works. As a species we currently have two countries (China and the USA) both with mobile analysis laboratory vehicles exploring Mars, both are equipped with their own drone systems with extensive and highly advanced camera arrays. Being the first humans to see such images in detail cannot be undervalued for me in the studio.

ALL MATERIAL IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT - © 1990-2026 Alexander James Hamilton - Distil Ennui Studio™ ®

NB: CASINI IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT NASA

Io is one of the 79 moons orbiting Jupiter, seen here against the vast backdrop of its parent planet.

This image was taken on the Cassini spacecrafts closest approach to Jupiter on its way to a permanent orbit around Saturn.

Although Io looks very close to the huge planet, it is in fact over 2.5 times Jupiter diameter from the cloud tops pictured behind it. Io is about the size of Earth's moon and has very active volcanoes.

Io against Jupiter, Cassini spacecraft image.

Here we see the vertical ice mountains, these are amongst the tallest seen in Saturn's main rings.

The towering ice formations rise abruptly to 5 klms in height from the edge of Saturn's B ring to cast long shadows on the inner ring which is used to calculate their size precisely.

Vertical ice mountains in Saturn's main rings, Cassini spacecraft image.

Notes

Source: Emma Coccioli in conversation with artist Alexander James Hamilton — FUSION 2010–2021 (illustrated PDF archive).