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Hannah Bertram’s work seeks to highlight that which is momentary, fleeting and overlooked rather than what is traditionally esteemed, conserved or revered as precious. The possibilities of preciousness are explored in ephemeral installations by subverting the traditions of ornamental display. In particular, by, making temporary work that employs the complex poetics of ornamentation and questions the value of permanence, extending the viewers experience and discovery of the work through various tactics of delay. These enriched moments of experience, question traditional values associated with permanence and posit an alternative consideration of ornamentation. These methods have been applied to illuminate the possibility of an extraordinary ordinariness, and the preciousness of the incidental.
The visual nature of the work drifts between presence and absence, visibility and invisibility. It seeks to be slow, fragile and delicate. The work is often visually understated, allowing for the possibility that the work itself will be overlooked. The physical nature of the work is in the fluid process of becoming and disappearing, and may include traces of the construction process. The work deliberately lacks the triumphantalism of ornamentation and instead is quietly subtle and vulnerable - open to the possibility that it will be overlooked, just as the preciousness embedded in the quotidian is often overlooked. The value of labour and time are also affirmed through highly worked motifs and by the impermanence of the work. The work repositions the value attributed to labour and time by stressing the importance of unquantifiable experience over a material product.
For many of the works the visual language of ornament has been used to transform banal materials. From the traditional function of Ornament as adding value, through to the Modernist position that rejected ornament as superfluous and inessential. This complex position - where Ornament is considered as being alternatively valued and worthless, precious and unimportant, revered and dismissible - remains a constant point of reference. The work varies from flat pictorial decoration of surfaces to ornamental objects and traditional methods for displaying them. It also at times, employs the ideas of Modernist architecture and design, that form should follow function and that decoration should exist not as an addition but should be present only when inherent within a material or process. Experiments have been made in which the nature of the debased materials dictate the form of the pattern. The significance of ornament has also been tested and challenged by deliberately making work without any ornamental motifs. The resulting works illuminated that materials and processes play fundamental roles in a content which questions the parameters of preciousness. However while the work could exist in a new way without ornament this absence also highlighted my ongoing attraction to this particular visual language. It was a reminder that as an artist it is important to make work that excites, captivates and confuses oneself - and ornament does this for me.
This work explores the ambiguities of preciousness and the ways that value and worth could be experienced within the subtlety of the incidental. The various functions of ornament were examined in order to identify its relationship to value, so that ornament as a signifier of preciousness could be discussed within a contemporary art context. The transformation of banal materials into ornate temporary installations aimed to shift the value of the work from the concrete object, to the fugitive realm of experience and to focus on the preciousness inherent in the everyday.
Ornament has held a continuing fascination for me and yet its role in creating value for objects seems in contradiction to my parallel fascination for the banal, the discarded and for the importance of immaterial temporal experience over the world of objects. Ornament suggests a notion of preciousness that stands in opposition to the unadorned world of everyday existence and yet this last too seems worthy and precious. How might ornamentation be used to highlight the preciousness of the everyday? More generally the role of ornament is currently being reassessed as its debased position in Modernism gives way to a reconsideration within postmodernist practices.
Adolf Loos’ critical lecture ‘Ornament and Crime’ published in 1908 is often sighted as the document that called for the abolition of ornament.
“I have discovered the following truth and present to the world: cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of ornament from articles in daily use…. the greatness of our age lies in its inability to produce a new form of decoration? We conquered ornament, we have won through to lack of ornament.”
The content of this essay has been disputed by contemporary advocates of ornament such as James Trilling who claims that throughout history it was, and still is commonly accepted that the elaboration of an object makes it special, and that which is added over and above the functional shape, for the sake of visual pleasure makes it a pleasure and a privilege to own. However the argument put forward by Modernist thinkers often suggests that during the 20th Century, ornament was predominantly dismissed as superfluous and inessential. This disparagement was disputed during Post Modernism but there remains an ongoing scepticism about the role of decoration.
My work is linked to and continues the discourse of ornament and its relationship to perceptions of value. The significance of this work within a contemporary context is in its dialogue between the traditional role as adding value to an object or surface, and its more recent history in Modernism where it was viewed as excessive and functionally futile. This play between the boundaries of apparent opposites creates a third and new dialogue about worth, value and preciousness, that identifies ornament not as either valuable or redundant but ambiguously both precious and worthless.
The preciousness explored in my work is lifted from the object and placed in the ephemera of experience. An attempt to readdress the traditional status of the art object as collectable and saleable is not new and has been well contested in Conceptual art. Therefore links can also be drawn between this work and Conceptual art ideas from the 1970’s onwards such as process based art, dematerialised objects, interventions and particularly to Arte Povera and its use of commonplace materials. One of the key aspects in locating the value of work within the experience of the viewer has been to make the viewer conscious of time. Through the decoration of temporality, the fragility and preciousness of existence itself are illuminated, repositioning a notion of worth that is not simply about the preciousness of objects but a greater worth.
The visual nature of the work drifts between presence and absence, visibility and invisibility. It seeks to be slow, fragile and delicate. The work is often visually understated, allowing for the possibility that the work itself will be overlooked. The physical nature of the work is in the fluid process of becoming and disappearing, and may include traces of the construction process. The work deliberately lacks the triumphantalism of ornamentation and instead is quietly subtle and vulnerable - open to the possibility that it will be overlooked, just as the preciousness embedded in the quotidian is often overlooked. The value of labour and time are also affirmed through highly worked motifs and by the impermanence of the work. The work repositions the value attributed to labour and time by stressing the importance of unquantifiable experience over a material product.
For many of the works the visual language of ornament has been used to transform banal materials. From the traditional function of Ornament as adding value, through to the Modernist position that rejected ornament as superfluous and inessential. This complex position - where Ornament is considered as being alternatively valued and worthless, precious and unimportant, revered and dismissible - remains a constant point of reference. The work varies from flat pictorial decoration of surfaces to ornamental objects and traditional methods for displaying them. It also at times, employs the ideas of Modernist architecture and design, that form should follow function and that decoration should exist not as an addition but should be present only when inherent within a material or process. Experiments have been made in which the nature of the debased materials dictate the form of the pattern. The significance of ornament has also been tested and challenged by deliberately making work without any ornamental motifs. The resulting works illuminated that materials and processes play fundamental roles in a content which questions the parameters of preciousness. However while the work could exist in a new way without ornament this absence also highlighted my ongoing attraction to this particular visual language. It was a reminder that as an artist it is important to make work that excites, captivates and confuses oneself - and ornament does this for me.
This work explores the ambiguities of preciousness and the ways that value and worth could be experienced within the subtlety of the incidental. The various functions of ornament were examined in order to identify its relationship to value, so that ornament as a signifier of preciousness could be discussed within a contemporary art context. The transformation of banal materials into ornate temporary installations aimed to shift the value of the work from the concrete object, to the fugitive realm of experience and to focus on the preciousness inherent in the everyday.
Ornament has held a continuing fascination for me and yet its role in creating value for objects seems in contradiction to my parallel fascination for the banal, the discarded and for the importance of immaterial temporal experience over the world of objects. Ornament suggests a notion of preciousness that stands in opposition to the unadorned world of everyday existence and yet this last too seems worthy and precious. How might ornamentation be used to highlight the preciousness of the everyday? More generally the role of ornament is currently being reassessed as its debased position in Modernism gives way to a reconsideration within postmodernist practices.
Adolf Loos’ critical lecture ‘Ornament and Crime’ published in 1908 is often sighted as the document that called for the abolition of ornament.
“I have discovered the following truth and present to the world: cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of ornament from articles in daily use…. the greatness of our age lies in its inability to produce a new form of decoration? We conquered ornament, we have won through to lack of ornament.”
The content of this essay has been disputed by contemporary advocates of ornament such as James Trilling who claims that throughout history it was, and still is commonly accepted that the elaboration of an object makes it special, and that which is added over and above the functional shape, for the sake of visual pleasure makes it a pleasure and a privilege to own. However the argument put forward by Modernist thinkers often suggests that during the 20th Century, ornament was predominantly dismissed as superfluous and inessential. This disparagement was disputed during Post Modernism but there remains an ongoing scepticism about the role of decoration.
My work is linked to and continues the discourse of ornament and its relationship to perceptions of value. The significance of this work within a contemporary context is in its dialogue between the traditional role as adding value to an object or surface, and its more recent history in Modernism where it was viewed as excessive and functionally futile. This play between the boundaries of apparent opposites creates a third and new dialogue about worth, value and preciousness, that identifies ornament not as either valuable or redundant but ambiguously both precious and worthless.
The preciousness explored in my work is lifted from the object and placed in the ephemera of experience. An attempt to readdress the traditional status of the art object as collectable and saleable is not new and has been well contested in Conceptual art. Therefore links can also be drawn between this work and Conceptual art ideas from the 1970’s onwards such as process based art, dematerialised objects, interventions and particularly to Arte Povera and its use of commonplace materials. One of the key aspects in locating the value of work within the experience of the viewer has been to make the viewer conscious of time. Through the decoration of temporality, the fragility and preciousness of existence itself are illuminated, repositioning a notion of worth that is not simply about the preciousness of objects but a greater worth.
h a n n a h b e r t r a m