Badriah Hamelink

Wielding an axe and a baseball bat, Badriah Hamelink knocked Armistice into shape — two reclining figures built from ten-kilo blocks of clay hurled one on top of the other. They fought each other to a standstill, but will their truce result in lasting peace? Slightly less violent is the large interpretation of the Slaughtered Ox, created by throwing handfuls of clay at a suspended length of burlap. Guided chance also appears in a series of smaller pieces reminiscent of classical statues. The expressive, intuitive works seem far removed from Hamelink’s abstract sculptures that exude order and ponder our existence within the universe. Perhaps The Great Attractor fills the gap; the sculpture represents a location in space, somewhere beyond the Milky Way, that pulls all neighbouring galaxies towards it. From the start, the cosmos is formed by violence and chance, the very forces humans struggle to come to terms with.