Nicholas Hatfull’s work revolves around metaphors of contemporary consumption, offering the viewer pre-digested nuggets of art history and modern life in an approximation of the dynamics of fast-food culture. Hatfull is interested in what, how and when we eat, connecting contemporary foods to painting. The large relief shown at Open Heart Surgery references globalisation in Hatfull’s habitually idiosyncratic manner, juxtaposing, in the artist’s words, “the empire-like expansion of Prêt a Manger’s convenience coffee, and Italian bar culture’s resistance to coffee-to- go.” Continuing a series of recent wall-based reliefs that present enlargements of industrial packaging and stylised suggestions of vegetation, the work combines the aforementioned corporation’s plastic cutlery with a recreation of the statue of an Ethiopian coffee-farmer the artist chanced upon in Rome, and the primordial scene of a lake and bear that constitutes an Italian restaurant’s logo. This evocative arrangement is intended in part to resemble roman trophy reliefs, which displayed the arms and armour of recently conquered provinces. Here, and in previous works, Hatfull’s lyrical associations bring competing cultural values into uneasy coexistence.
For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art
