Nicky Hamlyn works with film and video in a variety of formats and has published widely on artists’ film and video.
Nicky supervises PhDs in the School of Communication. He studied Fine Art at Reading University and has worked at the London Filmmakers’ Co-op and the BBC. His book Film Art Phenomena (2003) is published by the BFI and he has co-edited and co-authored books on the Austrian filmmaker Kurt Kren (Intellect, 2016) and on Experimental Animation (Palgrave 2018). He is a member of the editorial board for the Millennium Film Journal, New York. His work has been screened at festivals, group and solo shows around the world since 1978.
Key details
School, Centre or Area
Gallery
More information
Research interests
Critical writing on artists’/experimental film and video. Recent publications include a book chapter in the Palgrave Companion to Experimental Cinema (2024), which considers the functioning of the frame in filmmaking and analyses a number of key historical and contemporary works that reconfigure or dismantle the frame.
Practice
Nicky works with 16mm film and digital video in a variety of formats, including single and multi-projector works, loops and double loops that use permutative structures. He is interested in testing the role of the frame in film making, in recursive forms and works whose morphology is derived from that of the subject, so that the inherently distant relationship between camera and subject is put into question.
Awards
AHRC 2006.
Current and recent projects
Ongoing series of 16mm double loop works. Three-frame video loops that generate spurious patterns and optical effects, 2012- ongoing.
These loops are self-funded using minimal materials. They have been shown at Camden Arts Centre (Film in Space, 2012), at BEEF in Bristol, S8 Periferico Festival, A Coruña and at Crater Lab, Barcelona in October 2024. Ongoing: two long-term films about Swifts and Pigeons, using timelapse shooting over continuous six-month periods.
Publications, exhibitions, other outcomes
Publications.
Hamlyn, N. (2016) Strategies in Black and White: 4/61 Mauern pos-neg & weg and 11/65 Bild Helga Philipp, Negation and Contradiction in Kurt Kren’s Films: 32/76 An W + BMiscellaneous Works and ‘Bad Home Movies’. In: Hamlyn, N. Payne, S. Rees A L. Kurt Kren: Structural Films, Bristol: Intellect Books., pp 67-74, 99-108, 133-142.
Hamlyn, N. Inanimation: The Film Loop Performances of Bruce McClure. In: Smith, V. Hamlyn, N. (2018). Experimental and Expanded Animation: New Perspectives and Practices, London: Palgrave Macmillan., pp145-162.
(Winner of the 2018-2019 Norman McLaren/Evelyn Lambart Award for Best Scholarly Book in Animation).
Hamlyn, N. (2022). Dissolving the Frame: Amy Dickson’s Film Performances and Performance Films, New York: Millennium Film Journal No 75., pp 38-45.
Hamlyn, N. (2024) Unframing. In: K. Knowles and J. Walley, eds., The Palgrave Handbook to Experimental Cinema. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 93-106.
Film and Video Screenings and Exhibitions.
2024.
Screening with Helga Fanderl at Close Up Cinema,
18.04.24 (Object Studies, Pro Agri, Panni, Films).
Gasometers 3 at TIFF Lightbox, Montreal and Chicago.
2023.
Ferrel (one minute version) in One Minute Volume XI,
Visual Container online platform.
2022.
Passaporta at Fracto Festival, Berlin.
Passaporta at FICUNAM Festival, Mexico City.
Quartet, Kerfissien-Amlodipine and 4 x 3 x 2 at
Film Talks Live, Iklectik, London.
Rings, Quadrants and 4 x 3 x 2 at Club Solo, Breda,
Netherlands. 29.05.22.
2021.
Dansaert at Fracto Festival, Berlin.
Ferrel (one minute version) Fields of View event,
at The Others, Stoke Newington.
2020.
Solo show at Cinema Parenthèse at iMAL, Brussels.
(27.09.20)
2019.
Porquerolles, Zumzeig Cine-cooperativa, Barcelona
(19.06.19).
Porquerolles, Black Box, Edinburgh International
Film Festival (19-30.06.19).
2018.
Interval Here [ ] Now at Tintype Gallery, March.
Video and site-specific film installations.
2017.
Quadrants, Rotterdam Film Festival.
Com-Optimation at Holding Space, Site Specific 16mm film-
loop, at The Depot, 38, Upper Clapton Road,
London, 25.03.17.
Pairs: Gasometers 4 and film and discussion with fellow
filmmaker Neil Henderson, The Depot, 38, Upper Clapton
Road. 06.07.17.
Stop-Gap: Site specific film installation for group show at
the Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury, 06.11.2016.
2016-17.
Gasometers 3, Ann Arbor Film Festival Touring Programme:
Rice University - Houston, Texas.
Rhode Island School of Design - Providence, Rhode Island.
Speed Art Museum - Louisville, Kentucky.
Grand Illusion Theatre - Seattle, Washington.
Texas Theatre - Dallas, Texas.
Columbia College - Chicago, IL
Open City Cinema - Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
2016.
FOUR X LOOPS, Rings and Quadrants at Mono no Aware X Festival, Brooklyn, New York, 7th November.
Transits of Venus at Zumzeig Cinema, Barcelona, 4th November.
Ramsgate Beach at Light Touch, Pie Factory, Margate,
1st November.
Ramsgate Beach at Video (im)materialists, Close Up
Cinema, London, October 7th.
Now Wash Your Hands at The Advisory, July 10th.
Honoré Nicolas at Independent Film Show, Naples, June.
Honoré Nicolas at Analogue Recurring.
Single Screen programme and four projector works: FOUR X LOOPS, Rings and Quadrants at (S8) Periferico Festival, A Coruña, Galicia.
Gasometers Part 2 at Contact, Apiary Studios, London.
2015.
Zöetrope: One person show at London Gallery West,
March-May
Atonal Entryphone in One Minute volume 8:
various venues ongoing.
Thirty second camera phone films, online and Biennale
de Skopje.
Clapping in Boom Bang Bang II, at NN Contemporary Art
Northampton.
Atonal Entryphone in One Minute volume 8, curated by Kerry Baldry at Directors’ Lounge, Berlin
Gasometers Part 2 at Black Box, Edinburgh International
Film Festival
