Man Machine & Motion.

Newcastle upon Tyne / London.: King’s College in the University of Durham / Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)., 1955. Original printed wrappers, stapled.. (23 x 15 cm).. pp. (56). Black-and-white illustrations throughout, printed on both plain and tinted papers. In 1955, when Richard Hamilton was a professor at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne he conceived the project ‘Man, Machine and Motion’ as an exhibition that would represent a visual study of man’s relationship with moving machines. The work was first mounted in 1955 in the Hatton Gallery, in Newcastle, before later moving to the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art), in London. The installation shared certain connections with some of Hamilton’s 1950s paintings that explored the theme of movement in the photographs of Muybridge, Cubism, Futurism and Duchamp’s Dada works, but overall they incorporated the world of cinema, sporting achievements and his interest in and experience of machine design, which he shared with the critic and architect Peter Reyner-Banham, who collaborated in the Man, Machine and Motion catalogue. The exhibition was created using greatly enlarged photographs and illustrations of space travel, marine exploration, cars, aircraft, and gentler forms of motion such as cycling and gymnastics. The images were printed onto large Formica panels. The frames were double sided, and therefore housed over two hundred separate images. Hamilton designed the exhibition to be flexible, so that the frames could be moved and placed in different configurations. The catalogue was designed by Anthony Froshaug, with texts by Reyner Banham, Lawrence Gowing and Richard Hamilton.