Behind the Studio Doors - Badriah Hamelink MRSS

Behind the Studio Doors is an ongoing programme of talks with members of the Royal Society of Sculptors, chaired by curator and writer Isabel de Vasconcellos. For this new series, we are once again showcasing our members' studios around the world.

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About Badriah Hamelink MRSS

I make sculptures; tangible objects with which I try to capture fleeting things, like feelings or moments. That way something of that moment can stay present within the object, so that others can see and feel it too. It is a way of making connection with the future by showing something of what happened now.

In that regard sculptural work for me is much like giving shape to time itself; to what my eyes saw and what my heart felt. And therefore it is also about me a little, because I am the boat that brings you to the island. But the boat is just a boat you see? It’s not about the boat, but about the experience you have on the island. So in the end it’s more about you than about me, because you are the one seeing and feeling it.

What motivates me to create is an inner drive to see what will manifest itself when I try to execute what is in my mind’s eye, or when I try to just try to grasp at something. Where stone promotes meditation as a means to slowly find the centre, clay offers a way to contain the very moment itself, asking one to be absolutely present and in sync with the material at any given time. Clay absorbs any touch, freeing the moment to just be instead of endlessly hunting for it.

Hamelinks’s works have been shown in galleries and museums in New York, Luxembourg, Stockholm, Milan, Prague, Hawaii and Amsterdam. Badriah’s work can be found in a host of private collections worldwide. Her work has been generously funded by Stichting Stokroos, Cultuurfonds, Creative Industries Fund, Stroom Den Haag, Municipality of The Hague, International Research Centre for Ceramics and Mondrian Fund.

Follow Badriah on Instagram at  @badriah_hamelink
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Isabel de Vasconcellos is an independent curator and cultural producer, with extensive experience collaborating with artists and visual arts organisations to realise world-class public commissions and exhibitions. She writes on contemporary art, photography and design, and is the author of Fourth Plinth: How London Created the Smallest Sculpture Park in the World. Follow Isabel on Instagram at @i_de_v 

Click here to watch earlier episodes of Behind the Studio Doors