Tegan Hamilton | 'Testudinata, 2021' | 90x120cm

Code: MATH21006

Artist: Tegan Hamilton

Title: Testudinata

Area: Melbourne, VIC

Medium: Acrylic On Linen

Size: 90x120cm

Year: 2021

Tegan Hamilton's paintings of marine and animal life extend a natural history practice she has carried across glass, sculpture and paper for over a decade. Titled for the taxonomic order of turtles, Testudinata belongs to a body of work in which she turns her sculptor's eye on individual creatures, studying them with the same attention to volume, surface and light that she brings to a blown vessel. The subject is observed rather than symbolic: a specific animal, rendered with the patience of someone who has spent years watching how light behaves across a curved and textured surface.

Tegan Hamilton, born in 1985, is an Australian artist working in glass, painting and sculpture. She trained at Monash University, completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Glass) with Honours in 2007 and a Master of Fine Arts (Glass) in 2011, and has been an active member of both the Australian and Seattle studio glass communities, working alongside internationally recognised glass artists in Australia and abroad. Glass remains the discipline that shapes her eye: the blown and sculpted form, the behaviour of light through a body of material, and a precision of making that carries into her work on canvas and paper. Her subjects are drawn largely from the natural world, and from figuration handled with a sculptor's attention to volume and silhouette. She has exhibited throughout Australia and internationally, including several solo shows, the Talente exhibition in Germany in 2011 and the Corning Museum of Glass in New York in 2020, and has been featured in Craft Arts International. She has been shortlisted for the Art Gallery of Western Australia's Tom Malone Prize, the Ranamok Glass Prize, the Deakin Contemporary Small Sculpture Award and the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize at the South Australian Museum. She is based in Melbourne.