Seeing the Unseen - The Work of Hannah Merrill

Seeing the Unseen

The Work of Hannah Merrill

Hannah Merrill is an American painter, collagist and printmaker who earned her BFA from Manhattanville College in 2009. Having taken her education further at the Aegean Centre for the Fine Arts she has gone on to exhibit internationally, namely in the United States, India and Greece. She now works from her home studio in Leeds, England; recently creating a delicate body of work that regards our spiritual origins, the presence of the female figure and has a strong penchant for environmental conscientiousness.

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“The process of making, for me, is communication…in a way that words can’t”

H.Merrill - March 2022

Any artist that presents their work with the door ajar as to how it is actually made, immediately asks the viewer a question such as this – is its physicality or imagination more relatable? On one hand, you understand that it has been ‘produced’ and some of your thoughts instinctively drift in that direction, whilst on the other you also know that there is something unsaid peering out at you. Hannah Merrill’s delicate but deliberately tactile work immerses you in that space where your mind gets stuck in the middle.

The paintings that make up the “Putting down Roots” series typify Merrill’s interest in the subliminal nature of the unknown. Each of these works has a metaphoric depth in more ways than one; not only can we see the earthy dominance of meandering root systems but we also have - especially in “Phases”, (2022) - the deliberate inclusion of the canvas’s previous life as an object. Such a decision to present the older versions under the paintwork reveals Merrill’s attitude towards zero waste and the notion of an artist’s work being the result of where they have been, what they have lost and more importantly, what they have kept. 

On the subject of ‘the reveal’, the fact that Merrill has emigrated to the UK cannot be understated. Looking at things from an aesthetic point of view, it is fascinating to see how certain elements of ‘19th century subliminal Englishness’ have leaked into her treatment of decidedly more ancient subject matter. The interplay between the ethereal femininity and the harder, graphic quality of the natural world would not look out of place in William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience”- a work that embodies the struggle between man and the greater forces. Merrill’s work could also be described as illustrative and her preference for representing the unrelenting grandiosity of nature in small, page-sized works undoubtedly draws parallels to artists such as Blake. The recurring theme of the tree carries as much weight for her as it did for him, as it encapsulates that seemingly perfect natural form that either lives or dies at humanity’s whim. You could say that she uses the particular nature of lino print and its monochromatic starkness to reflect on our present environmental crisis. More importantly however, these prints are the result of seeing value in discarded material at the time of making. Given that the pages are chosen for their imperfections, each print reveals Merrill’s preoccupation with the dichotomy between how we perceive ugliness and beauty; ink stains, small creases and torn edges make up as much of the composition as the subject.

Comparisons to aspects of Romanticism and the Ideal can be seen in Merrill’s utilisation of the female figure, which appears frequently in the smaller scale pieces. Both “Earthbound” and “Clipped Wings”(2020) feature a woman with her back turned to us, showing an Icarus-like set of feathered wings. This everywoman represents the questions around the female in society, the male gaze and if sexually negative attitudes are either soaring or plummeting to the ground. She is not based on a real person, nor is she an intentional version of the artist herself but the figure does speak of the influence that theatre and performance has had on her recent work.

Having been involved with theatre at a younger age, there is a still a feeling within her collages that relates not only to the world of myth and interpretation but also to symbolically heavy devices - the swan and the moon for example - which have many different connotations for many people. Mythology and theatre have gone hand in hand for centuries and the pairing continues to recycle ancient stories for us to place into our own world. What is interesting about Merrill’s collages is that they utilise mixing and material choice to concentrate the authorless origins and shrouded truths of legend into a series of relatable, miniature backdrops.      

What is certain is that Merrill’s work exemplifies the environment, storytelling and defining the indefinable. Each piece of paper, layer of paint or streak of ink talks of the importance of process within her work and how recycling fits into its overall meaning. Speaking of the future, it will be intriguing to see if one of the three main mediums under discussion here starts to exemplify the gap between reality and imagination more than the others. Will it be a repurposed lino-print? A new painting of an elemental enigma? A return to the everywoman?

Hannah Merrill has the potential to start a body of work that could come to represent modern day mythology – it might even already exist on her studio floor.

CLICK HERE for artist website

All images Copyright of the artist

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Phases oil on canvas 2022

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Earth bound collage/mixed media 2020

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Wolf Moon collage/mixed media 2020

Collected from an Exile - ATB Gallery

September 17 - October 5 / Via Riccardo Sineo 10 / Turin

Photo gallery of the private view and accompanying critical review by Alessandro Allocco, ATB founder.

Works on show: Choice Material (2021), Bums on Seats, First Past the Post, The Dilemma, A Coincidentalist Work (2020), 14 Exposures (2018)

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by Alessandro Allocco

Pure meaning, pure matter, poverty of subject, but the infinite richness of a staunch belief in the change of art.

 "Collected from an exile" is the work and result of Sam Vickers’ passionate research, exhibited at the ATB Cultural Association. It is an experiment of "non-art as art" in the age of social media. A series of interactive works based on time and the choice of materials that find their raison d'etre between conceptual emptiness and material value in constant fluidity of meaning - either full or devoid of emotional value depending on whether or not it falls within a market trend (in itself devoid of phatos, sensitive only to economic logic). Sam Vickers' works visually translate the need of perceiving art as a sign of effective change through coherent concepts inspired by social media. On his crusade into "exile", the British artist renews a pictorial language with the refinement of the material provocatively transformed only by time. The works on display, both material and social, are a concrete statement of the British artist's style. Sam Vickers seeks the avant-garde in the 21st century, as many of his fellow artists did in the 20th from Fontana to Burri, through the tendency to recognize matter’s fundamental meaning - that is no longer subordinate to the image being represented, as it is the very same protagonist of the work.

  Neodadaist artists such as Rauschenberg, Johns, and Nevelson or of Informal Art such as Burri, Milani, Somaini or even the Gutai group, are part of the circle of “matter” supporters but we can also find considerable interest that confirms this important artistic current in Surrealism and Futurism.

The first material paintings were made with clear provocative intentions of social denunciation: violent tears, disturbing black backgrounds or jumbles of fabric without a precise shape, but with symbols inherent to the historical context, jewels of undeniable charm that arouse curiosity and interest. "Collected from an exile" addresses a complex question - is non-art art? This concept is not new even if, in our western world today, the split between art and non-art is quite recent. There is a long history linked to the "everyday" (especially within modernist thought) in which the mundane provides  that "creative charge" so typical of contemporary artistic language. Sam Vickers’ works on display support "a cultural and holistic approach, above all non-ethnocentric, in the delineation of the process of construction of the ideas, practices and institutions of the arts ..." (Larry Shiner, The invention of Art. A Cultural History 2001).

The concept of non-art as art is linked to the new and improved social conditions of our opulent West, which have stimulated new tastes and aesthetic conceptions that are actually dissimilar to the academic achievements of the past: new places in which to experience and discuss poetry, of instrumental painting or music outside their traditional social functions, physical and virtual places, material and immaterial.

Equally, the concept of non-art as art cannot disregard the history of art through which it is perceived, namely to understand what our culture considers artistic there is a variety of time, place and social strata to consider; as well underlined by Picasso, who recognized art in African and Oceanic everyday objects (for work or otherwise: ritual masks, sticks, spears) and raised them to museum object status. He was right because beyond the system of social relations that art has always generated in culture and beyond the different ways and styles of formal creativity, aesthetic dimension is always proper to every human activity.

The concept of non-art as art is a commonly experiential element that affects all social levels because, after all, being artists is a fundamental characteristic of our species, it is a need and capacity encoded into our genetic memory, it is an elementary necessity of human beings constantly looking for fulfillment, satisfaction and ease, beyond mere utility.

The habit of considering art distinct from what is not currently dominant art in the West, is spreading further into the rest of the world and collects peculiarities of one’s own life as an artist, of unique pieces, of unerring research and the authorship of wonder. All that is called art is a cosmopolitan phenomenon that globally connects not only the markets of aesthetic products, but also many (if not all) local aesthetic dimensions that are, more or less, already "contaminated" - often consciously and programmatically hybridized with non-art.

  The exhibition "Collected from an exile" by Sam Vickers welcomes the two sides of art and non-art as art and treats them as complementary attitudes towards traditions and post-modernity; also making them part of a complex framework of hybridizations between local traditions, mass culture, experimentalist elitism - in an intrinsically "postnational" dynamic.

Bums on Seats Part IV

This week is all about colour. Yes I know, colour theory has been done to death but I feel that it’s important to consider it- especially following my recent works “First Past the Post” and “Straight from the Horse’s Ass”. I would also say that because I haven’t worked on a painting for a while (in the traditional sense) it serves as a reminder to not make any schoolboy errors. Experimentation is all well and good but the wrong choices will confuse everything. Or will they?

Up to this point the work has been mainly talking about the progression of time and the obsessive nature of your own online presence. So how do these abstract concepts relate to a colour scheme?

In truth it’s all down to interpretation; would I consider a month with crap viewing figures as being a cold colour? Or alternatively, would a green or a blue indicate a calmer feeling of, “oh well last month went alright so I don’t need to worry about it...”? On the flip side, warmer colours mean something different but essentially carry the same set of  contradictions. It’s a bugger alright.

Christ, don’t trip over your laces on the starting line, it’s only colour, they’ll fade over time anyway- which does in fact lead me into the next point. I mentioned the passage of time earlier and this work (which will account for a year’s worth of analytics) represents how something as trivial as a statistic is all consuming but is then quickly overtaken by the latest data set. In the gallery below are some of the tests that I have been doing, beginning on canvas. In the later versions, even though the simple progression around the colour wheel can be digitally altered to any preference, it’s interesting how complimentary colours cancel each other out even in a computerised simulation.      

The acrylic tests include some experiments with opacity using a gloss medium as a thinner. I would say that I’m unsure about which is the best ratio but in any case it felt like I was painting with dead expensive shampoo or conditioner- not ideal! However, translucency is something I should explore further as it gives the image more depth and would make a change from the block colours of the previous works.

Next week: preparing canvas ……..YAWN…… but seeing as I’m writing about everything…