The Famous Series
2002, digital prints with mixed media

Dana and Travis Hanmer explore our desire to become an ideal, an icon, an object of consumption. To this end, they have preserved and displayed parts of their bodies, along side images of famous artists, onto who’s faces they have superimposed their own. These objects are presented together, along with official seeming documentation detailing information about each artifact. The work creates a ruse in order to generate the aura of importance around the Hanmers own bodies, even if it is through the theft of another’s persona, or at least a celebrity’s image - a rerepresentation of a representation.

These pieces manipulate the process of recognition through the use of easily recognizable (altered) images, and (false) data. The Hanmers have cooped the tools of the institution of art, namely museums and galleries, as use of vitrines and official seeming labels lend credibility to their claims. Thus, the casual viewer may only question why these objects are being brought to their attention. Is this an extreme form of artist worship, or simply evidence of an artist’s existence? In this case, the Hanmers have confused their audience just enough to begin to associate the idea of celebrity with Dana or Travis as image and physical reality. Through this deception, the Hanmers are able to elevate a piece of themselves to a place that is removed from the more banal reality of the impermanence of all of our bodies.

Contained with in every glossy image of a celebrity there is the reminder of a gap, a void. That gap exists between the reality of a physical body, and that body’s representation. The Hanmers have simply taken the opportunity to fill that void with themselves. Rather than attempting to individualize the subject by bringing the image into the physical world, they have attempted to elevate their bodies to a level of fame and glamour through association—they are not interested in the de-mystification of these artists, but in the mystification of the self through an association with celebrity.

To see samples of this project, you can email me at travis@hanmerproject.com