Sam Hamilton

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The Sex Choir, 2012
Acoustic
Dimensions variable

While in the Amazon, Sam Hamilton recorded extraordinary sounds made by frogs. Upon returning to New Zealand he replicated these sounds with a choir of 30 human beings. Echoes of the biological, behavioural and social commonalities between humans and other species can be heard in this choral interpretation.

In a nod to Yves Klein who once exhibited eleven identical artworks each listed with a different price tag, Hamilton offers buyers an option of five different sale prices to choose from. In doing so, the artist questions the valuation of art.

"Sam Hamilton received one of the modest, peer-funded Starving Artist Fund grants organised by artist A.D. Schierning, which paid his way to the Amazon to make field recordings of the sounds of the jungle. It is easy to imagine his encounter with the legendarily vibrant ecosystem having something to do with a shift in his music making that coincided with that trip, away from the sit-down seriousness to something more pop. Euphoric and trance-like aspects of soul, rock and other dance music have been combined with art-music experimentalism in constantly evolving ways since in his work, often striking an exciting balance between complexity and immediacy."

The Sex Choir
The Sex Choir
The Sex Choir
The Sex Choir
The Sex Choir
The Sex Choir

More from this artist

Artist Bio

Sam Hamilton is an interdisciplinary artist from New Zealand who when not projecting abroad, resides in the sovereign state of K’rd, Auckland. Hamilton has a formidably broad, windy and bountiful practice and background as an artist. Having spent the last decade endlessly, entirely and tirelessly engulfed in experimental music, composition and thinking, sound art, experimental film/video, expanded cinema, installation, performance, design and photography project as well as directing and curating numerous events and a number of independent festivals and programs in Auckland. As well as being tirelessly active in his home town, he has also spend a lot of time particularly over the last few years working on projects, residencies, exhibitions and tours throughout South America, North America, Europe and Australia. Hamilton’s practice today, although considerably more refined than ever, refuses to solidify into any discernible boxed shape and his practice is remains and tapestratic as ever. Yet, like any physicist, biologist, geneticist, ecologist, mycologist or cosmologist would agree with, nothing is entirely separate, and like life itself, they are all equally codependent on each other. This is the 21st century and it’s time we broke down the blinded ultra specialization, exclusiveness and singularity worship that strangled the 20th century and start approaching problems, ideas, life, earth, humanity and art with a more broad, inclusive, diverse and dynamic way of thinking and existing. Saying this, there are certain foundations. In regards to music, In recent years his musical practice has predominantly moved towards pop music, releasing records and internationally touring his work. Once described as being the “Double Rainbow” of music, his pop music is a ritual of ecstatic and hypnotic engagement with the all encompassing Now, a dually chaotic and ordered manifestation of the universal vibrations as filtered through the social/physical/emotional/intellectual/sexual orientation of being human. A symphony of sound and ideology as equally influenced by Prince as by Noam Chomsky, by Yoko Ono or Sesame St. But it is in this unstable but fertile union of a background in deep experimentation in sound and art, a taste in music wider than 'E=mc2' and an lustful intuition to wrestle with the subconscious gravitational pulls of pop music that is the breeding ground for his music today.

Hamilton has been the recipient of a number of awards, grants and scholarships including the Arts Foundations New Generation Art Awards, several CNZ project grants, the SOUNZ Community Commission, the Brombron series in the Netherlands, a Goethe Institut cultural ambassador scholarship for Berlin and the Mamori Project residency in Brazil. He has performed and exhibited his work throughout NZ, Australia, the US, South America and parts of Europe.