SAMMY HAWKER

Messums London exhibited Mount Gulaga, 2021 and Honeycomb #3, 2023 at 2026 Photo London. These photographs exhibited alongside works by Yan Wang Preston, Polly Penrose, Jean-Vincent Simonet and Finn Gibson.

Photo London is the UK’s leading international fair for photography and image-based art. Each year it brings together the world’s most acclaimed photographers, galleries and curators alongside a new generation of emerging talent.

Mount Gulaga, 2021: This image is a 4x5 photographic negative processed with ocean water - created on while standing on Murunna Point looking out towards Mount Gulaga (Yuin Nation). When processing film with ocean water the corrosive properties lifts the silver emulsion and the representational image is rendered vague. However an essence of the site is introduced to the frame as the vibrant matter paints its way onto the negative. It is reminiscent of a birds eye view of waves crashing onto a shore & also the swirl of an outer solar system dotted with distinctive cross-shaped stars. A ghost of the mountain looms behind the abstraction - felt rather than seen.

Honeycomb #3, 2023: This image is a 4x5 photographic negative co-created with a hive of honeybees. This work evolved from research around the European ritual 'telling the bees', where honeybees are told of recent deaths in a beekeeper's household. It is believed if the bees are not informed they might leave the hive and follow the deceased into the afterlife. Photographs were delivered to hives of ecologically disturbed sites 'informing' the bees of the mass disappearance of more-than human lives in the roar of the Anthropocene.

Email london@messums.org for enquires.