Hannah Hamberg
A Little Shame
Galleria Huuto Uudenmaankatu
12-30 July 2017
I am now tall enough to reach the fourth shelf in the kitchen cupboard and able to grab the meringue bag. Meringue is delicious, crunchy and full of vanilla flavor, but the crumbs on the floor stick to the bottom of my socks. I always wear three pairs of fluffy socks at the same time. Cold toes, small toenails, thick ankles and a wart. I wasn’t invited to Sirpa’s birthday party. She lives next door. The neighborhood girls always end their stories when I join them and no one wants to swap stickers with me. I just have to get used to staring at their backs, the backs of their heads and their buttocks. Sirpa Vatanen has a flat head and googly eyes. She constantly cracks her short fingers. Snap and pop – the googly eye’s neck and face swell up. Sirpa is ugly but she still has friends. I will have my own party. There is a bag of mixed vegetables in the freezer, dry marshmallows in the chest of drawers and olives in the fridge. After swallowing one of these treats, I will already have the next one on my tongue. Sirpa can keep her birthday party! I will shovel savory and sweet, sweet and savory things into my mouth. I will take one bite after another until a piece of sausage sticks to my palate and I forget about Sirpa.
I have created the works in the exhibition using materials I liked as a child. Strict rules and principles guide my work.
– The color may not spread over the lines.
– Each element must be painted from beginning to end before I can move on to the next element. Thus, the details will lead to new ones and ultimately take over the entire surface.
– Brush strokes cannot be left visible and the entire surface must be worked with equal precision.
– The image has to be regularly painted upside down to prevent my eyes from getting used to it. Getting used to something too much makes me lose my concentration.
– Each piece of polymer clay must be sanded down with five different sandpapers after baking to remove dust particles. Fingerprints, air bubbles and cracks (imperfections) must be sanded down until no longer visible. The final sculpture must be handled with rubber gloves on so that the grease on my hands doesn’t stick to the surface.
– The starting point for each shape and color is to achieve pleasure. The soft clay must be worked by hand until the shape feels just right. If the baked and sanded sculpture no longer gives a feeling of pleasure when I look at it, it must be rejected.
Further information:
Hannah Hamberg
hamberghannah(at)gmail.com
tel. 040 580 2566
