Megan Hamilton. Artist. Photographer.
Artist Bio
Megan Hamilton is a multidisciplinary artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in drawing from the Alberta University of the Arts on Treaty 7 land known as Calgary, Alberta. Her practice incorporates a variety of mediums such as photography, collage, painting, silkscreen, installation, projection and video, to convey and explore ideas of death, grief, trauma, liminal spaces, identity, memory and the body. Concealment and manipulation/mutation, are reoccurring techniques used to create other-worldly places of the uncanny and unseen, embedded with emotional residue.
My photography practice explores otherworldly portraiture and dreamscapes. Focusing on surreal emotional photos of the figure in landscape and abandoned spaces, I create enigmatic, poetic images preserving moments in time. Evoking dreams, hallucinations and nostalgia my photos offer a glimpse into a mysterious, often hyper coloured world filled with beauty, life and loss, allowing the viewer a moment to escape into another realm.
Through a mix of multiple mediums, my practice allows me to externalize the internal, examine my grief and traumas and allow my unconscious free to create psychologically charged liminal spaces which explore life and death, preservation and decay, spirituality, ritual, found objects, memory, and performance. Traces and ghostly whispers echo throughout my use of materials. I explore realms of dreams, other worlds, the unseen, and the liminal, which function as a solace in working through trauma. The feeling of displacement evoked by these worlds becomes reminiscent of mental states of dissociation and living with grief. My art is transforming, perpetual processes of becoming, questioning, and crossing boundaries and patriarchal structures. I infuse my self and emotion into my art mutating the familiar into the uncanny, playing with the invisible, holding hands with the dead. Remembering to forget, forgetting to remember; letting go while holding on.
Education
2017-2022
Alberta University of the Arts
Residencies
2021-2022
The Hear(d) Residency, AUARTSSA, Calgary, AB
Exhibitions
2022
Burial Grove, solo exhibition, The Marion Nicoll Gallery, Calgary, AB
2022
A drop into Memory, group exhibition, The Queten Doolittle Memorial Gallery, Calgary, AB
2022
AUArts Grad Show, group exhibition, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary, AB
2022
2022
2022
The fourth-year photo showcase, group exhibition, Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary, AB
Subject to Change, group exhibition for the Hear(d) Residency, Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary, AB
Rewinding the Tape, group exhibition at the Marion Nicoll Gallery and online, curated by The Hear(d) Residency for Exposure Photography Festival, Calgary, AB
2022
The Painting Show, group exhibition, Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary, AB
2021
2021
Where Art Belongs FINA 450, group exhibition, Room 371, Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary, AB
Drawing Department Exhibition, group exhibition, Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary, AB
2021
Guess Who Pathfinders, group exhibition, Alberta University of the Arts, online at the Marion Nicoll Gallery Website, Calgary, AB
2021
Uncanny Dwellings, group exhibition online, Alberta University of the Arts
2021
The 15th Annual Horse Show, group exhibition online, Alberta University of the Arts
2020
The Drawing Show, group exhibition, Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary, AB