#hamad butt

I hadn't remembered the artist's name, but I saw this picture and it instantly brought back a vivid memory of seeing the installation on show (I don't remember where, but I assume it was the Rites of Passage show at the Tate in 1995), and the terrifying humour, peril, temptation, shock of it:

Cradle was a monumental variation on the desk toy Newton’s Cradle, but rather than metal balls that knock against each other, it comprised 18 vacuum-sealed glass baubles filled with lethal chlorine gas which would smash if set in motion. Hypostasis consisted of three vicious-looking bowed glass spears with orange liquid bromine tips. The third work was Substance Sublimation Unit – a perilous ladder with rungs made from vials containing heat lamps and iodine crystals, which transformed into a gorgeous violet vapour as they were heated, ascending like an otherworldly stairway. Butt’s dark humour is evident in these visceral sculptures that invite participation but can also kill.

Because seriously, you see these big glass baubles strung from the ceiling, swaying ever so slightly with the movement of air in the room, and even knowing how fragile they are, and that they're full of poisonous gas, they do tempt you to set them in motion, just once...

I'm glad I have more context now, and sad that we lost this artist so young (he died in 1994, age 32), because even without knowing more, it has stuck in my memory for thirty years.

Hamad Butt: Apprehensions

This stunning publication accompanies the first retrospective exhibition of the pioneering work of Hamad Butt.

Hamad Butt was a British South Asian artist active during the 1980s and 1990s in London and a contemporary of the Young British Artists. His artistic practice explored his national, racial, and sexual identity--as queer, British-Pakistani, Muslim by upbringing, and a person with AIDS.

Prior to his untimely death in 1994, Butt completed and exhibited four significant sculptural installations which sought to forge new connections between art and science during the time of AIDS. He was also a prolific maker of paintings and works on paper.

This monograph includes contributions from esteemed art historians, curators, and artists that look at Butt's encounters with science and alchemy, his relationships with diasporic and queer communities in the 1990s, and his lasting impact and legacies. Filled with new reproductions of his installation work as well as previously unpublished paintings, drawings, and writings, this catalog seeks firmly to establish Butt as a major figure in the canon of international contemporary art.