hummadruz
- August Carpenter

Opening Tuesday 22 October 2024 6pm – 8pm

ARTIST TALK
Saturday 9 November 2pm

Referencing the elusive phenomenon of ‘hummadruz’ – described by Robert Macfarlane as “a noise in the air that you cannot identify, or a sound in a landscape whose source is unlocatable” – August Carpenter’s exhibition explores the tension between what can be grasped and what remains perpetually out of reach. These monotypes evoke a space of unidentifiable feelings and unsettling realisations, a place where second guesses and a sense of floating are able to coexist. Dense, abstract and dark, the prints reference isolation, suspension and ambiguity, with textured layers that suggest both presence and absence – much like a humming sound that is untraceable and yet ever-present.

August’s work teeters between documentation and imagination, reflecting a broader meditation on the difficulty of locating clarity in a world were meaning often remains shrouded. In this exhibition, the prints capture an emotional landscape, resonating like a low ringing in the ears – an unsettling sensation that might represent something foreboding, but simultaneously implies reassurance. With gestural marks breaking through swathes of black, there is a sense of forms emerging from the darkness, barely perceptible, as if drawn through a mist.

This new body of work continues August’s focus on atmospheric and emotional climates, capturing the ways in which we navigate uncertainty and imperceptible forces. Drawing on past explorations of landscape, climate and loss, Carpenter’s abstractions speak not only to the visible world but also to the hidden, to the unspoken and to the things that are simply too vast to fully comprehend. Like the idea of ‘hummadruz’ itself, these works exist in the space between perception and mystery, inviting us to hold lightly what is known, while remaining open to the unknowable.

– August Carpenter 2024