Exhibitions

James Hamilton has been guest curator of some important recent Turner exhibitions.

• Turner and the Scientists
  (Tate Gallery 1998),
• Turner: The Late Seascapes
  (Clark Art Institute, Williamstown and touring to Manchester and Glasgow; Catalogue: Yale University Press, 2003)
• Turner’s Britain
  (Gas Hall, Birmingham; Catalogue: Merrell Publications, 2003).
• Turner & Italy
  (Ferrara, Edinburgh and Budapest, 2008-09

VOLCANO - from Turner to Warhol

Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 24 July - 31 October 2010

Volcano celebrates the extraordinary outpouring of artistic genius that volcanic eruptions have triggered over the past five centuries. From sixteenth century engravings showing imagined cross-sections of the fiery centre of the earth, to an explosive series of paintings by Joseph Wright, J M W Turner and Andy Warhol, the exhibition will include important loans from public and private collections in volcanic regions such as Naples and  Reykjavik, as well as works from museums in London, Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham, Paris, Rome and New York.

The show will compare and contrast the approaches of artists long dead with contemporary artists whose own approaches to  eruptions may be analytical and elliptic rather than dramatic

As Curator of Art at Portsmouth, Wakefield and Sheffield, and latterly as Director of the Yorkshire Contemporary Art Group in Leeds, James Hamilton organised dozens of exhibitions in the 1970s and 1980s, including:

• Wilhelm Lehmbruck 1881-1919: Sculpture, Painting, Graphic Work
  On loan from the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum, Duisburg (Portsmouth, 1974)
• Arthur Rackham 1867-1939: Illustrations, Drawings and Watercolours (Sheffield, 1980)
• Edmund Dulac 1882-1953: Illustrator and Designer (Sheffield, 1982)
• 25 from 51 – Paintings from the Festival of Britain (Sheffield, 1978)
• Artist in Industry (Sheffield, 1983)
• The Danish Show: Paintings (Yorkshire Contemporary Art Group, in conjunction with the Danish Ministry of Culture, 1986/87)
• Tradition and Innovation in Printmaking Today: A New Collection of Prints for Rank Xerox (Yorkshire Contemporary Art Group, 1986)
• New Art in Yorkshire (Yorkshire Contemporary Art Group, 1987)
• Yorkshire Contemporary Art Group: Report 1986