2021
Hamiltonian Artists is pleased to present the opening of Sometimes, We Remember Our Bedrooms, with Hamiltonian Fellow Luke Ikard in collaboration with Joshua Gamma, both at momentous junctures in their lives, revisiting the bedrooms of their youth. Through the playful combination of distorted domestic objects, playground equipment, and a time-warped soundtrack of memory, the artists create an installation and sculptural sound piece that recalls their childhoods and knowingly recreates an inaccurate representation of a past home.
Ikard explores the additive and subtractive nature of bunk beds as his language of longing. By fusing the intimate, fraternal space of the bunk bed with the public commons of the playground, Ikard plays with childhood conceptions of familiarity and safety. The fragmentary, fort-like domestic structures of Sometimes, We Remember Our Bedrooms function both as objects of play and places of rest, existing in the liminal space between mourning one's childhood familial relationships and the hope of constructing one’s own future.
Gamma’s contribution to Sometimes, We Remember Our Bedrooms consists of a compilation of cassette sound and image collages made by the artist as a kid. Composed of song snippets, radio static, local commercials, sermons, and various oddities, these cassette works provide an idiosyncratic glimpse into the pre-internet, pre-corporate-FM-takeover airwaves of South-Central Louisiana. The revisited work finds Gamma, a new father, digging back into his childhood archives—reflecting on the excitement of discovery and genreless freedom afforded by the playful practice of his youth, and on the profound cultural exchange that radio can be untethered from bland monoculture.
Luke Ikard (b. 1990, Houston, TX) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Baltimore, MD. Alongside his studio practice, he manages the Makerspace at Johns Hopkins University for the Whiting School of Engineering.
He completed his MFA in Multidisciplinary Art from the Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2017. He received his BFA in Studio Art from Sam Houston State University in 2014. Ikard was a 2018-2020 Hamiltonian Fellow in Washington, DC. He received the 2015-2017 Merit Scholarship from the Mount Royal School of Art.
His work is part of the College of Fine Art and Mass Communication permanent collection at Sam Houston State University. Ikard has also produced site-specific work at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum Park and has exhibited throughout the United States. Including the Hamiltonian Artists Gallery in Washington, D.C., Walter Otero Contemporary Art, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
Ikard employs domestic objects to create the opportunity to perceive an unfamiliar past or to invent a new one. Ikard uses domestic materials, animation, science fiction soundscapes, digital fabrication, and interactive electronic technologies to create a sentiment of displacement; a longing for a home that no longer exists or never did. He draws from objects as samples of distance experiences in which the object can only evoke and resonate, but never entirely recoup. Ikard uses home-like installations to give memories form through furniture, evoking a disquieting sense of anxiety and loss. These objects suggest potential narratives, loss, and memorial fragments that collide to form new events. Ikard’s work focuses on the emotional distance and tension in formative familial relationships and uses his own experiences to expand the meaning of the home. This work is a transitional space between mourning one's loss of familiar childhood relationships and the hope of constructing one’s own future space.
Luke Ikard (b. 1990, Houston, TX) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Baltimore, MD. Alongside his studio practice, he manages the Makerspace at Johns Hopkins University for the Whiting School of Engineering.
He completed his MFA in Multidisciplinary Art from the Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2017. He received his BFA in Studio Art from Sam Houston State University in 2014. Ikard was a 2018-2020 Hamiltonian Fellow in Washington, DC. He received the 2015-2017 Merit Scholarship from the Mount Royal School of Art.
His work is part of the College of Fine Art and Mass Communication permanent collection at Sam Houston State University. Ikard has also produced site-specific work at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum Park and has exhibited throughout the United States. Including the Hamiltonian Artists Gallery in Washington, D.C., Walter Otero Contemporary Art, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
Ikard employs domestic objects to create the opportunity to perceive an unfamiliar past or to invent a new one. Ikard uses domestic materials, animation, science fiction soundscapes, digital fabrication, and interactive electronic technologies to create a sentiment of displacement; a longing for a home that no longer exists or never did. He draws from objects as samples of distance experiences in which the object can only evoke and resonate, but never entirely recoup. Ikard uses home-like installations to give memories form through furniture, evoking a disquieting sense of anxiety and loss. These objects suggest potential narratives, loss, and memorial fragments that collide to form new events. Ikard’s work focuses on the emotional distance and tension in formative familial relationships and uses his own experiences to expand the meaning of the home. This work is a transitional space between mourning one's loss of familiar childhood relationships and the hope of constructing one’s own future space.