Living in Hell and Other Stories

The Way Home by Tom Hunter [2000]
a 'remake' of Ophelia by Millais.

The exhibition Living in Hell and Other Stories will be showing at the National Gallery from the 7th December 2005 to the 12th March 2006. Tom Hunter's new work for this exhibition takes as its subject the lives of the ordinary residents of Hackney, as reported in local newspapers.These often startling stories are told in carefully staged photographs derived from Renaissance paintings. Hunter's reputation has been established with a series of engaging, puzzling and provocative photographic reworkings of paintings from the past.

Hunter’s concern with the political issues surrounding the right of ‘squatters’, ‘travellers’ and all those viewed as ‘outsiders’ is reflected in his choice and treatment of his subjects.

'Woman reading a Possession Order' is an example of his work based on compositions of British 19th Century Pre-Raphaelite paintings and, from 2003, based on headlines from his local newspaper, The Hackney Gazette. This a beautifully crafted photograph based upon a painting by the 17th-century Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer. Tom Hunter won the Kobal Photographic Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in 1998.