Photography

I am intrigued by the materiality of analogue film and the possibilities this presents. I am interested in how the unpredictable results from more-than human agents can disrupt my authorial control over the image and break open the permanency of the photograph.

I have been working with film, inviting more-than human agrnts

When processing film with ocean water the corrosive properties of the salt lifts the silver emulsion and the representational image is rendered vague. However an essence of the site is introduced to the frame as fractals form on the horizon and crystals appear around the disappearing edges.

“Sammy Hawker's photographs hum and crackle and whisper with a compelling sentience that evades most ordinary landscape images. But then Hawker's photographs are anything but ordinary...”

Art Collector Profile
Jo Higgins

*With Nature* | Canberra Contemporary Art Space
Image credit: Brenton McGeachie

processing film with Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre | photo credit: Anna Hutchcroft.

“Hawker has a very expanded idea of the studio. A set of open lipped glass jars for collecting water, lines of string for hanging negatives to dry in the wind, thick ragpaper, a wide brimmed hat and sturdy boots to clamber, a detailed diary of notes to record activity, a laptop and the cameras; the medium format 6x6 Mamiya C330 that forces the creation of a view by looking down into a reverse reflection and the large format 4x5 Linhof Technika.”

Salt, 2023 | Exhibition Essay
Virginia Rigney, Senior Curator CMAG

Co-creating imagery with two hives of honeybees:

*Conversation with bees* | Goulburn Regional Art Gallery
Image credit: Silversalt Photography

6x6 negatives for the hives | photo credit: Rich Mockler

“Sammy is less interested in showing the world as image and more interested in producing artefacts that are inseparably part of the world and which embody within them the forces of time and chemistry and light distinctive to particular places in the world. This is true of all her works, but perhaps most evident in her series of chromatograms, in which the ‘image’, if we can call it that, emerges as a direct, non-representational trace of the interactions of place-specific physicality as expressed in soils and waters.”

Acts of Co-Creation, 2021 | Exhibition Essay
Dr Kirsten Wehner, Director PhotoAccess

Cymatics

Cymatics (from Ancient Greek: κῦμα for 'wave') is the study of making sound and vibration visible. I have recently been working with Australian designer Sam Tomkins to develop a series of analogue cymatic instruments.

explain Chladni Plate

Cymatic Instrument vibrates to water.