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Tom Hammick (b 1963). After studying History of Art at Manchester University, Hammick became a stonemason working in Dorset. He went on to study Fine Arts at Camberwell School of Art, followed by an MA in Printmaking. He is now a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Painting and Printmaking at the University of Brighton.
This work is part of the ‘Lunar Voyage’ series, a suite of large-scale woodcuts that narrate a dreamlike story of travel and discovery into outer space, veined with nostalgia, awe and mystery.
Lunography speaks of the dream of a child grown up in the 1970s, when the mysteries of space were first being plunged into, with awe and fascination. The space rocket, colourful and small against the majestic, austere moon, comes close to it without quite reaching it, ‘like a fishing fly,’ filling up the space between them with longing. The moon was carved with an industrial laser-cutter; as Hammick explains, ‘the combination of marks made by both hand and machine echoes the traditionally blunt and hard-edged language of the woodcut.’ Upon a closer look, the surface of the moon is revealed to be a rather personal map: amongst the Latin names of its seas and mountains are places Hammick has lived in and dreamed of.
