Hamblet Lydia

Lydia Hamblet (b.1995) is a British artist based in London. She received her MA in Print from the Royal College of Art in 2020, having previously studied at Camberwell College of Art. Recent solo exhibitions include Noises in the Florid Sky, Pictorum Gallery, London (UK) and Two Months of Something, AMP Gallery, London (UK). Her work has been included in recent group exhibitions: Breeze, Enari Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), A Journey into the Unknown, Haricot Gallery, London (UK), Between Light and Sun, Galleria Palla Blu, San Remo (IT), Flares in the Darkroom, The Who Gallery, London (UK), Taking a Broom to the Wasp’s Nest, Pictorum Gallery, London (UK). Hamblet was commissioned by Canary Wharf to complete a permanent public mural as part of their Art Trail in 2023 and has had work acquired by Perèz Art Museum Miami, Florida (US) for their permanent collection.

A change in weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves anew - Hamblet often refers back to this Marcel Proust line which may be detected in her abstract oil paintings. Her work is perhaps best expressed in the language of meteorology: squalls, flurries, moments of both haziness and clarity, and an abiding sense of brightness and heat. The weather has a privileged place in the discussion of complexity (Kosofsky Sedgwick, 2011). Hamblet’s canvases are concerned with experiences — visual, spatial, emotional — that have passed into memory, where they have become both intensified and strangely diffuse. Translated onto canvas, this can often be seen via her choice of colours, application of paint and compositional devices. Several works which stem from research drawings of municipal sports pitches have allowed motifs to evolve through repetition and reiteration. This consequently evokes notions of anticipation, a gathering of energies and atmospheres prior to some coming spectacle to arise in her work.