SAMMY HAWKER

Chromatograms are the visual expression of vibrant matter - a self-portrait of the materials being used to create them.

The process of chromatography was developed by Russian-Italian botanist Mikhail Tsvet in 1900. While commonly used by scientists to understand the chemical makeup of soil, I have been testing the process’ ability to facilitate the visual expression of a wide range of natural materials. When making chromatograms I takes the role of a facilitator - expectations must be set aside, as the hues and patterns that form as the solution spreads over the silver nitrate-soaked paper cannot be predetermined or controlled.

Chromatography speaks to the energetic resonance or memory inscribed within materials. A chromatogram made from drowned caterpillars found in a trough has the ethereal markings of a moth wing. A chromatogram made from dehydrated placenta feels like life bursting forth out of an abyss. Chromatograms made from human ashes are effervescent and unique - every individual will express themselves differently, even from beyond the veil.

Disintegration can also be thought of as metamorphosis and sometimes it feels the essence of a material is not necessarily tied to form. The process of chromatography gives voice to the essence that has survived the many alchemical transitions it might pass through.

An ongoing archive of chromatograms can be found here.

“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

“Chromatography, in Hawker’s hands, becomes a kind of requiem, a post-mortem metamorphosis that distills the subject into its elemental components. These pieces are at once memento mori and meditations on the intangible, infinite, and mutable nature of existence. Her work gestures toward a spiritual unity and an unseen connectivity residing in every insect, tree, and molecule, revealed only through an interaction between natural and scientific-humane processes. And this connection can only be resuscitated through careful inspection and in-syncness with her art as a viewer.”

Basta Magazine Feature
Iker Veiga, 2025