For over twenty-five years Brenton Hamilton has built a sustained body of work concentrated within the historic processes of the nineteenth century. Influenced by surrealist motifs, coaxing dreamlike chance collisions of fragments from art history, he shapes a new landscape: the symbolism of the dark night sky and the freedom to look outside himself towards unfettered ideas, learning to make a new place with paper, metal salts and light.

He combines human anatomy, astronomy and botanical material to create intriguing and provocative arrangements, referring to ancient Greece and Rome as well as to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Dutch and Italian painting, and using symbols from the history of art to make a thoroughly contemporary vision. His references run to the artist's studio, to early diagrams and engravings of anatomy, to bird study and to the Wunderkammer.