Philip Hammial

1937. Originally from Detroit, Philip Hammial arrived in Australia in 1972. A self-taught artist, he has had thirty solo exhibitions and has participated in over seventy group exhibitions, including two in Paris. His primarily figurative sculpture is constructed with found objects: steel, brass, copper, wood, cloth and occasionally plastic and is held together with screws, bolts & nuts, wire, nails and glue (he has deliberately not learned to weld). He makes them quickly, in a light trance, following the dictates of the materials at hand. There is no theory behind them: Hammial refuses to justify his products with Artspeak (a language of which he is ignorant in any case). The pieces are simply what they are: creatures of the imagination.He is also a poet with, to date, twenty-four published collections, two of which were short-listed for a NSW Premiers Award (the Kenneth Slessor Prize), Bread in 2001 & In the Year of Our Lord Slaughters Children in 2004. His poems have appeared in twenty-two anthologies of Australian poetry and in 89 magazines in eleven countries. Hammial has represented Australia at five major overseas poetry festivals, most recently (April 2009) at the Micro-Festival in Prague & Brno. In 2009/10 he had a six mo...

Philip Hammial (b.1937) grew up in and around Detroit, Michigan. After three years in the engine rooms of US Navy ships he went to Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan, and then to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he discovered poetry, art, philosophy and history. Graduating with honours in English Literature and Philosophy in 1963, he went on to travel the world for a total of ten years, visiting seventy-five countries & working in three Denmark, England and Greece. SELECTED PAST EXHIBITIONSOrange Regional Gallery'Creature Comforts' (surveyexhibition)25/07/08 - 05/09/08James Harvey Gallery, Clovelly'The Last Picture Show'(with Stephen Dernocoure)25/07/08-14/09/08Di Colman Gallery, Orange(with Glen Smith)07/05/0427/05/04Orange Regional Gallery,Orange'Heckenberg & Hammial'29/11/03-14/01/04Gallery Lane, Leura'Baghdad Inc.'08/08/0324/08/03James Harvey Gallery,Clovelly'Talking Trash'23/04/03-10/05/03Bathurst Regional Gallery'Sculpture by Philip Hammial'03/07/02-18/09/02Hazelhurst Regional Gallery,Gymea 'Ceausecu Left Laughing'16/02/0203/03/02Gallery Lane, Leura07/09/01-23/09/01James Harvey Gallery,Balmain27/03/0107/03/01Orange Regional GalleryOutreach Program01/05/0017/07/00Casula Power House Art Gallery'A King & His Court'16/02/9...