‘Beach’ is a group of prints blending geology, nature, community, sensuality, and bodily freedom by rendering the experiences on a gay beach in the ancient, arid volcanic landscape of the Canary Islands.
The artist Rory Hamilton is attempting to capture and tenderly represent the identities of a range of body types and their simple interactions, and from a distance, capture the actors in a ballet of voyeurism, camaraderie, and subtle negotiation.
The beaches and dunes of Gran Canaria have been a queer meeting place for many hundreds of years; from pirates and sailors, to cabin crews stopping over on the early long distance flights to South America. During Franco's dictatorship (1939 - 75), the Canaries, a rocky outpost 1300km away from mainland Spain in the Atlantic ocean, were a haven for the outsider escaping the most brutal aspects of the regime.
As if conversations with new friends, Rory Hamilton aims to capture identities of these rarely-addressed male bodies (in their many forms) of these gay people seeking time away in a space where queer is the norm, in tiny, intimate portraits.
They are portrayed distant from each other but connected by a shared desire for bodily freedom, a lack of judgment, and the chance to explore different sides of the queer experience.