Sam Hamilton Exhibits at Portland’s Converge 45

“The strongest curatorial statement of [the biennial] Converge 45 is at Oregon Contemporary, where a five-channel video by Portland-based, Aotearoa New Zealand-born Sam Hamilton (Sam Tam Ham) rejects the hegemonic world order in favour of a more equitable network of relations,” Claire Voon writes in an article about the shows of Converge for international art magazine, Frieze.

“An experimental opera/interdisciplinary project, Te Moana Meridian (2020–22) proposes relocating the Prime Meridian from the imperialist orientation on Greenwich, London, to the global commons of Te Moana-Nui-ā-Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean). Voices of impassioned orators, filmed inside a parliament and an archive, merge with those of youth of the Lincoln City Children’s Choir, seen dancing on a beach,” Voon writes. “Their sustained, intergenerational chants are a grounding thread through footage that aligns human gestures and nature’s rhythms into a cyclic flow. Te Moana Meridian is an earnest consideration of something that might seem impossible, and a provocation to imagine what seismic changes we may will into existence. It’s an example of what Converge 45 does at its best: affirm that communities can be united beyond arbitrary lines or normalised gestures.”

Hamilton was born in Auckland in 1984.

Original article by Claire Voon, Frieze, September 18, 2023.