Richard Hamilton – Protest Pictures
Until October 12, Inverleith House, Edinburgh

Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? That’s the title of Richard Hamilton’s famous Pop Art collage of 1956, in which a muscleman holds a giant lollipop in the living room of every housewife’s dreams.

You might be less familiar, however, with Hamilton’s explicitly political work, which comes together for the first time at Inverleith House. The artist has taken on politicians, riots, terrorism and wars, and satire is not the only weapon in his arsenal; since as early as the 1960s Hamilton has focussed on the chilling way that we consume conflicts entirely mediated by television.

The Kent State series of screenprints relays a blurred close-up image, complete with television scan-lines, of a student protestor shot by the police in 1970. By the time the image reaches us, it has gone through so many iterations that it has become degraded almost beyond recognition.

If, of this famous pop artist, you expect nothing but flat, impersonal collages, you’d be surprised by the colourful pastel version of Kent State. A set of drawings and engravings of legendary Irish hero Finn McCool reveals the hand of an accomplished draftsman, and gloopy texture abounds in Swingeing London 67, based on Mick Jagger’s drug-related arrest.

The last room brings us a monstrous portrait of Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell from 50 years ago, side by side with a brand new digital collage of Tony Blair. Gaitskell’s portrait seethes Baconesque menace, and its study in copper gives you a genuine fright. Shock And Awe, picturing Blair in swaggering cowboy gear, falls flat in comparison.

Another Prime Ministerial portrait, this one from the 1980s, is particularly effective. An aura of lightness and calm tends to greet you in Inverleith House, leaving you unprepared for the claustrophobic space of Treatment Room. The installation is viewed through a window of wired glass, below which is embedded a cooker control panel. Over a narrow, clinical bed hangs a monitor, force-feeding the imagined patient a diet of Margaret Thatcher, sound off, image too close for comfort. Don’t stay too long in here, or you really will need treatment.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 10.08.08