Better Read #014: Richard Hamilton, Five Tyres Remoulded (1972)

Richard Hamilton invitation with 1951 Technique et Architecture illustration used for Five Tyres - abandoned (1964) and Five Tyres remoulded (1972)

Sometimes I hit a wall while writing, and retyping someone else's text helps get me going again.

So here is another installment of Better Read, a series of mp3 files from greg.org in which an interesting, under-known, or hard-to-find art-related text is read by a computer.

This text by Richard Hamilton accompanies Five Tyres remoulded, 1972 relief and print edition created with Carl Solway and EYE Editions. Hamilton describes his attempt to replicate by hand a complicated photo illustration he'd clipped from a trade magazine. The image was from the 50s, the project began and was abandoned in 1963, then reinitiated in 1970 with the help of a computer. Besides the obviously interesting insights onto his own process, Hamilton's text resonates with the history of early Pop, conceptual art, and even appropriation, as well as the inter-relation of art and technology.

Unless you had the portfolio itself, the text was only available in print in Studio International (1972, vol. 183, p. 276). Images of a first draft of the text were also included in a 2014 blog post by Carl Solway about his correspondence with Hamilton. So I'm sure having a computer-generated voice recording of it expands its availability tremendously.

Richard Hamilton, Dimensional Data, screen print on mylar, 60x85cm, from Five Tyres remoulded (1972), via swann