All images from the series Ethereal Serotonin Climax © Sam Hutchinson
Influenced by the counterculture, Sam Hutchinson questions reality and perception with his series Ethereal Serotonin Climax
“I’m more interested in photography than any other medium because it’s the one that manipulates,” says Sam Hutchinson. “Especially when we think of authority, and the way that governments or corporations use images to control everyone.”
Born in Sunderland in 1993, Hutchinson discovered photography through his love of skateboarding and hardcore punk, countercultural scenes which emphasise DIY and creativity. He remains fiercely independent and proactive. Now based in Leeds, having moved there to study at Leeds Arts University, he furthered his education via School of the Damned, a free alternative programme, and now makes art, edits his own magazine, Boot Mag, and works at local contemporary bookshop Village. “I’d rather be busy than bored,” he says.
Hutchinson has always lived in cities and says this experience informs his practice; he often makes his work in semi-abandoned or post-industrial spaces, creating images that flatten perspectives, muddling the move from 3D environment to 2D picture. Some of his photographs are documentary, simply logging his environment and rendering it strange, others explore temporary sculptures or interventions he makes in the landscape. Still others document his friends and acquaintances, the inhabitants of this peculiar contemporary world. “I love photographing people when they are vaping,” he laughs. “To me, vaping seems more futuristic than a flying car.
“I love photographing people when they are vaping. To me, vaping seems more futuristic than a flying car” – Sam Hutchinson
“Function is something I come back to a lot in my work, especially with technology or architecture,” he adds. “We are living in a fast-moving environment, things become obsolete but still hold a reference to their past purpose. I’m fascinated by how architecture seems very firm say, for example, in the banking district where there are these big, geometric forms that scream power. But in my work there are elements that feel transient and surreal. I like blending these very linear forms with transient moments, so you’re not sure whether it’s real, staged or fake.”
Hutchinson’s installations are similarly tricky, further disrupting perceptions of space or reality; he is also a keen zine-maker, producing publications with titles such as Amazon is Burning, MARX CCTV GRAVE, or Watching a Supermodel Sleep on a Plane. The images shown here come from Ethereal Serotonin Climax, which he published last year; its title refers to his experience of staying in Catalonia, hanging out with fellow artists, making work and discussing it in the evening. Some of the images in the series were shot in Spain, including rough sculptures he set up in an old chalk quarry, but others come from closer to home. He found the smashed screen when he was working on a building site, for example, and was attracted to it because of its obsolescence. As he prepared to photograph it, the sun started to set, lighting up the fractured glass.
“I thought, ‘Not only is it an archaic piece of technology that’s been rendered useless, it looks like something out of a 90s sci-fi film’,” he says. “The colours haven’t been manipulated, it’s just a beautiful pink sunset. I love sunsets and sunrises – I love being in nature but I find it surreal, maybe because I’ve always lived in cities. To me, a beautiful sunset coming through the trees feels like a film, the world looks so different for that half-hour period per day.”
Ethereal Serotonin Climax felt like a breakthrough, he adds, because in it he mixed his various interests for the first time; somehow it suddenly felt easy, “it clicked in my brain, this is how we live now so it doesn’t need to be separate”. He has also been reading more, picking up Baudrillard after many recommendations, and realising the simulacra concept feels close to his work. He is fizzing with enthusiasm for sculpture too, and the idea that his works are contemporary sculptures because we now often engage with art objects online.
“We say we love someone’s work, but we’ve actually never seen it,” he points out. “We’ve seen a representation of it through images, through digital media. We kind of forget that what we’re seeing isn’t real. So who is to say that sculpture in photography is photography not sculpture?”
