Katie Hammett is an illustrator, artist and designer from south Devon, England. Since studying Illustration & Animation at Kingston University London, she has moved to Berlin where she scans 70s porn magazines, runs around Tempelhofer feld and works with Berlin Feminist Film Week. As a visual communicator she creates socially conscious work that is relevant to contemporary society. A lot of her work is issue based, with a continuous thread of her practice being the questioning and exploration of the cultural values attached to the female body.
“PER MINUTE is a project in which I appropriate found material from UK soft-core magazine ‘Fiesta’ and the more explicit U.S ‘Hustler’. By abstracting images through processes of addition, subtraction, and distortion, I remove porn from its familiar cheap throwaway format, and situate it in a glossy magazine context. Mainly using a scanner and photocopier, I play with the idea of reproduction and the quality of the printed image, and have placed my work alongside the essay ‘How Porn Hijacked Our Sexuality’ by Gail Dines. This manipulation and recontextualisation of imagery is designed to act as a mirror of our current culture, reflecting our ideas, attitudes and aesthetic sensibilities back at us – creating a conversation with ourselves and others. Dealing with representation, sexual objectification and censorship has presented me with the challenge of ensuring my work communicates as a critique of these ideas and constructs, and does not act as a continuation of the problem. The further I have delved into this broad subject I have come to realise that my work does not have to provide an absolute answer or solution. Rather it is a visual response to one thread of a much larger tapestry – intended to prompt discussion and debate across a large audience – all of whom are affected by these issues.“
http://cargocollective.com/katiehammett
