IF you float through the fiery gate, amble down the surreal path, take a right at the melting pond, and climb the tree of abstraction, you might just find yourself in the outré mind of Jem Ham.
In the real world, it’s a little studio at the back of a Hilton rental, where the artist’s imagination runs riot.
Hair dangling low, covered in paint, he conjures up all sorts of weird-looking things, animals and plant life, which often inhabit the same vivid dream space.
It’s a bit like someone chucked Salvador Dalí, Magritte and Miró into a blender.
His latest exhibition Emergent Curiosities is inspired by the author Aldous Huxley, who experimented with psychedelics in the 1950s and famously wrote about his edifying trips.
Ham is particularly enamoured with Huxley’s quotes that “our mind still has its darkest Africas, its unmapped Borneos and Amazonian basins.”
• Marshy by Hilton artist Jem Ham (above).
“After reading Huxley’s words, there was a moment of insight and I realised my works were like specimens in a kind of psychic ecology, and I was just a mere collector of them,” Ham says.
“I had never gotten round to reading his seminal work The Doors of Perception until recently.
“It was one of those moments where an author has put into words an idea that I have been quietly exploring through my art for a while now.”
Ham’s exhibition will feature a range of oil and acrylic paintings on canvas, linen and board.
• More of the amazing paintings by Hilton artist Jem Ham in his upcoming solo exhibition Emergent Curiosities.
Highlights include the stark Marshy, which looks like a boab tree with human limbs and a light bulb sticking out its trunk, and the eye-catching Microcosm, which features a colourful hybrid creature with traces of a peacock and squid.
The Chook especially enjoyed Life, death and the free electron, an expansive and chaotic oil painting which doffs its cap to Dalí.
Most of Ham’s work tends to bubble up from his subconscious.
Photographed by Lucida Studio
“At times the process is like reaching into a black hole to grasp a thin thread, carefully teasing it out so it doesn’t break until it is fully formed,” he says.
“At other times it feels more like a gestation, and I carry around a kind of mind-baby until the moment arrives when there is a pressing urge to push it out into the world in a single emotional outburst.”
The bastardised flora and fauna in his work is perhaps a nod to his formal training in environmental science.
This led to living and working overseas, where he was exposed to different cultures and ways of life: “This shaped my perspective and influenced my art in ways I only fully appreciate in hindsight.”
The 44-year-old dabbled with different mediums in his formative years, before settling on painting and drawing.
He is influenced by artists like Man Ray, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and the late Australian iconoclast Brett Whiteley.
“I loved the fluidity of Whiteley’s strokes and form, his unabashed and unconventional expression of the human figure, and his compositional aesthetics left a lasting impression on my subconscious,” he says.
Originally from Melbourne, Ham has been living in Freo for the past 14 years.
He still dreams of a being a full-time artist, but says his day job, which involves providing ‘social support’ to people, keeps him grounded and connected.
But once he steps inside that tiny Hilton studio, time, space and everything in-between is up for grabs: “The act of drawing can feel like dropping into a dream state…”
Emergent Curiosities is on March 7-15 at the CoLab 2 Gallery SHACC, 3 Cower Mews, White Gum Valley, with opening night from 6pm-9pm on March 6.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK