Richard Hamilton, one of Britain’s most innovative and original artists who first came to international attention as the founding father of British Pop Art in the late 1950s, has been preoccupied for more than fifty years with James Joyce’s modernist epic Ulysses. First published in 1922, the year of Hamilton’s birth, Joyce’s revolutionary novel provoked a storm of controversy upon its publication in Paris and was banned in the English-speaking world until 1933 on account of its sexual frankness, scatological obsession and vulgar language.

The idea of illustrating this complex, experimental novel occurred to Hamilton while doing his National Service in 1947.  As a student at the Slade he made numerous preliminary drawings and studies with a view to producing etched illustrations of Joyce’s text, but for technical and practical reasons the project was put aside in 1950.  After a break of more than thirty years Hamilton resumed illustrating Joyce in a series of large-scale independent etchings during the 1980s.  Some of these are re-workings of the earlier studies, others are completely new treatments.  In the 1990s, with the computer as an increasingly important tool in Hamilton’s repertoire, the Iris digital print joined the sequence of illustrations.  Evolving technically and intellectually over a lifetime, Hamilton’s images represent an odyssey through the themes and ideas of his own career as well as those of Joyce.

Imaging Ulysses assembles all the studies and prints produced since the project began in 1948, most of which come from the artist. Commissioned and organised by the British Council, the exhibition is part of a European tour which includes Cankarjev Dom Galerija in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Tübingen Kunsthalle, Germany and Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland. For The British Museum venue, the 109 works produced by Richard Hamilton for the project will be supplemented by additional loans from the artist and a special display of first edition Joyce books and related ephemera from a private collection.

Imaging Ulysses opened at The British Museum on 2 February 2002, the 80th anniversary of the publication of Ulysses.  The exhibition also coincided with Richard Hamilton’s 80th birthday on 24 February 2002 and is the first solo show given to a living artist at the Museum since 1974 when Henry Moore’s illustrations to W. H. Auden’s poems were exhibited.  A fully illustrated catalogue designed by Richard Hamilton and written by Stephen Coppel, the curator of the exhibition, has been published by the British Council.

Exhibition tour dates:

			Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam		10 May – 31 August 2003
			Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland		13 June – 15 September 2002
			The British Museum, London		2 February – 19 May 2002

Other Richard Hamilton works form part of the British Council Collection, available to see now.

For further information please contact Katie Boot.