Richard Hamilton

Interesting retrospective at Tate Modern of work by Richard Hamilton, often seen as the inventor of Pop Art.

I found this show fascinating as I keep coming across iconic works by Hamilton such as “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so modern, so appealing?” and the Rolling Stone screen prints but I had no idea how they fit into the body of his work. The show was arranged chronologically but also drew comparisons across his work. He seemed to strike an interesting balance between political comment and humor.

I liked the way the show used reconstructions of iconic exhibitions such as his work for the “This is Tomorrow” exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery and I look forward to popping to the ICA which is currently showing two more of these reconstructions in the space for which they were devised.

My favourite works were the three Northern Ireland diptychs showing a dirty protestor, a soldier and an Orangeman. I was also interested to see how often he reused the one of the dirty protestor in a number of his later works.

I came out of the show liking his approach and I will certainly look at his work in shows with more interest. I really felt he had something to say that I wanted to listen to.

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