#hamad butt

[pepperf]

I hadn't remembered the artist's name, but I saw this picture and it instantly brought back a vivid memory of seeing the installation on show (I don't remember where, but I assume it was the Rites of Passage show at the Tate in 1995), and the terrifying humour, peril, temptation, shock of it:

Cradle was a monumental variation on the desk toy Newton’s Cradle, but rather than metal balls that knock against each other, it comprised 18 vacuum-sealed glass baubles filled with lethal chlorine gas which would smash if set in motion. Hypostasis consisted of three vicious-looking bowed glass spears with orange liquid bromine tips. The third work was Substance Sublimation Unit – a perilous ladder with rungs made from vials containing heat lamps and iodine crystals, which transformed into a gorgeous violet vapour as they were heated, ascending like an otherworldly stairway. Butt’s dark humour is evident in these visceral sculptures that invite participation but can also kill.

Because seriously, you see these big glass baubles strung from the ceiling, swaying ever so slightly with the movement of air in the room, and even knowing how fragile they are, and that they're full of poisonous gas, they do tempt you to set them in motion, just once...

I'm glad I have more context now, and sad that we lost this artist so young (he died in 1994, age 32), because even without knowing more, it has stuck in my memory for thirty years.

Dominic Johnson, professor at London’s Queen Mary University, is writing a book on Butt, whose work he considers “the most sophisticated response we have in British art to HIV/Aids”. “He produces these environments that are both fearful and seductive, and that just seems so fertile for thinking about sexuality in that moment. At the same time he’s thinking about his own body as a vector of fear, as an HIV-positive body, a brown body, a Muslim-appearing body – all these other ways in which he’s this fearful outsider figure,” he says. “All that makes the work very powerful; it’s also really beautiful.” In uniting seemingly opposing ideas such as science and the supernatural, emotion and intellect, the sacred and profane, high art and gothic horror, Butt’s work feels astonishingly fresh and resonant today. Restlessly curious, he understood that science did not have all the answers and was equally invested in art and alchemy. In a poignant moment of [his brother] Jamal’s home video, Butt laments the disappearance of demons, familiars and magic in the shift from “medieval alchemical witchcraft to modern rationalistic chemistry”. Despite his weak condition, he laughs, saying: “It’s this dangerous spirit that I like and think should be revived.”

[milksockets]

'transmission part i: illuminated glass books' by hamad butt, 1992 in the scar of visibility: medical performances + contemporary art - petra kuppers (2007)

[cosmicanger]

'familiars part i: substance sublimation unit (ladder)' by hamad butt, 1990 in the scar of visibility: medical performances + contemporary art - petra kuppers (2007)

[yourmoonmomma]

Is hamad sexually attracted to me

What’s his favourite physical feature of mine ?

Thank you❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹🐳

Yes.

In the 6th House - Your stomach or butt.

You're welcome!

[confirmation-of-practice]

Hamad Butt, Familiars, 1992

I have chosen to research this installation "Familiars" by Hamad Butt due to its reference to Transubstantiation in the Tate Moderns online description.

quoted here "Given the artist’s contemplative ruminations on the intersection of the scientific and the spiritual, this progression can also be viewed as a reflection on the process of transubstantiation whereby, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, the bread and wine used in the Eucharist become in reality the body and blood of Christ."(Tate modern)

The exhibition consists of three parts the one imaged above being "Substance Sublimation Unit " which is a series of 6 vacuum sealed capsules filled with iodine solution. The lamps are heated using a heat lamp which causes the capsules to glow red and purple due to the iodine being converted into gas. This process of conversion from liquid to gas is said by Tate to refer to transubstantiation and the process of bread/wine into the body and blood of Christ. As a installation it is highly abstract and would be difficult to derive that meaning without aid, however, one you understand this you can see clearly how this relationship is being communicated.

Within the work Butt is interested in this transitional phase and process of transubstantiation, whereas I'am more concerned with what the implications are of believing it happens and what impact it has. What I admire about Butt's piece is how abstract he has taken it opposed to the other more clear pieces I have focused on previously. I'm unsure at this stage where I should lie between these two very different approaches to craft/art work and whether or not I want to be more aligned with literalism or abstractionism. What I do know is the more I research the more I begin to understand where I want to be.

[cbeddoesindependent2019]

Hamad Butt, Familiars, 1992

[milksockets]

'familiars part i: substance sublimation unit (ladder)' by hamad butt, 1990 in the scar of visibility: medical performances + contemporary art - petra kuppers (2007)