The annunciation 2005

The annunciation is an image created by digital collage, combining photography and painting in a complex sequence of actions. It presents a monochrome gallery interior, in which a painting of a naked, seated woman talking into a cordless telephone hangs on the wall. Within the painting the woman is illuminated by a white glow from a small lamp on an incidental wooden table beside her. Next to the woman and the lamp, the curtain is drawn on a window showing a view to a tree silhouetted against a dim blue light between day and night. The woman stares into space as she interacts with the telephone, her left hand casually playing with her blonde curls. The interior and the painting are derived from two separate photographs. The gallery space is taken from a photograph of the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in Dering Street, London, where Hamilton exhibited in the 1980s and 1990s. For an exhibition there in 1995, Hamilton photographed seven gallery wall sites in black and white and then digitally collaged colour transparencies of one of each of seven rooms in his home onto the walls so that they appear to be paintings hanging in the space. He then printed the collaged image onto canvases and these were hung on the walls, resulting in a double view of the gallery wall and its surrounding architectural features, framing the coloured image of the domestic interior. The wall space used in The annunciation was previously used as the background for a view into Hamilton’s bathroom in the painting Bathroom, 1994-5 (collection Shirley Ross Sullivan). The composition is a complex study in perspective, including wall surfaces and ceiling beams coming together at varying angles, a light fitting and an air vent, all anchored by an area of dark grey parquet floor. Hamilton modified the wall and ceiling details to create flawless gradations of grey tone.