IMMA presents the first retrospective exhibition of the work of ground-breaking artist Hamad Butt (1962-1994)

Born in Lahore, Pakistan and raised in London, Hamad Butt was British South Asian, Muslim, and queer. A contemporary of the Young British Artists, critics described him as epitomizing the new ‘hazardism’ in art; his poignant and severe work is emotive yet austere. Before his AIDS-related death in 1994, aged 32, Butt completed and showed four major sculptural installations, which forged new encounters between art and science in the time of AIDS. He also left behind videos, writings, drawings, paintings and plans for new installations; and was a pioneer of intermedia art, sculptural installation, sci-art and queer diasporic art.

Butt belongs to a group of British artists – most famously Derek Jarman (subject of a 2019 IMMA retrospective) – who responded to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Unlike Jarman however, Butt’s art did so in a non-militant way, dealing with the subject matter through subtle inferences to sex and death, an approach which connects his work to major international figures like Felix González-Torres, who similarly used a more minimal sculptural vocabulary.

Butt’s most iconic works, Transmission (1990) and the three-part series Familiars (1992), have never been shown together. None of his works has ever been shown outside the UK. Hamad Butt: Apprehensions is the first retrospective exhibition of Butt’s work and it seeks to correct the ways his work has been overlooked in British and international histories of contemporary art. It brings together Butt’s extant works, including the four major installations and supplementary parts, including the reconstruction of a destroyed work (a cabinet inhabited by live flies); schematic drawings, sketches and written notes from his archive; previously unseen (or rarely shown) paintings, etchings and works on paper; and a videotaped interview with the artist.

Butt’s works imply physical risk or endangerment: in Transmission, the threatening image of a triffid (a literary harbinger of blindness and mass extinction) is visible if one dons protective glasses to screen out the harmful ultraviolet light; in Familiars, we encounter chemicals that can heal us (they are disinfectants), but that irritate, burn, blind or kill if unleashed. He summons the fear of injury and contamination as analogies, perhaps, for the threat of disease and contagion (including that of HIV/AIDS), for mortality, or for airborne disasters – of climate emergency or of war. He also invokes the perceived threat of the racial, religious, or national outsider, through references to Christian and Islamic iconology, and to religious, spiritual, or hermetic orders of knowledge, such as the Islamic history of alchemy. His invocations of the end of the world are redolent in our own contaminated present – blighted (still) by pandemics, looming environmental disaster, migrant crises, and terror from the air.

Hamad Butt: Apprehensions is a retrospective exhibition developed in collaboration between IMMA and Whitechapel Gallery, London. The exhibition restages the Familiars, and Transmission sculpture series, along with paintings, drawings, and archive materials that contextualise his practice. The exhibition is curated by Dominic Johnson, Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at Queen Mary University of London, and co-curated with Seán Kissane and Gilane Tawadros. The exhibition is organised in cooperation with Jamal Butt and the Estate of Hamad Butt.

The accompanying exhibition catalogue is edited by Dominic Johnson and features a comprehensive survey essay (the first of its kind), and new commissioned essays by scholars, curators, conservators and artists including Alice Correia, Seán Kissane, Steve Kurtz, Adrian Rifkin and others. It is the first significant book-length study of the work of Hamad Butt. The catalogue is published by Prestel and supported by Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Price €35 from the IMMA Shop.

Commenting on the exhibition, Annie Fletcher, IMMA Director said; “We are thrilled to work with Whitechapel Art Gallery, Dominic Johnson, and Jamal Butt, to realise this long-overdue retrospective of Hamad Butt. Building on our series of exhibitions that has revisited and revised the art of the 1990s, including The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now and Derek Jarman: Protest!, this exhibition reveals how other, truly significant, histories of the ‘90s and HIV/AIDS, can enrich our understanding of that time, and also provide a more complex and diverse lineage for the art of the present moment.” 

Hamad Butt: Apprehensions is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.

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For further information and images please contact: 

Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] T: 086 2010023
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected] T: 086 2009957

Additional Notes for Editors Exhibition Details 

Title: Hamad Butt: Apprehensions
Exhibition Dates: 06 Dec 2024–05 May 2025
Museum Opening Hours:
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm Wednesday: 11.30am – 5.30pm
Sunday: 12noon – 5.30pm
Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 5.30pm

IMMA TALKS
Preview Curators’ Panel Discussion 
Thurs 5 Dec, 5.00 – 6.20pm, Johnston Suite, IMMA 
Dominic Johnson, Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at Queen Mary University of London, Gilane Tawadros, Director, Whitechapel Gallery in a moderated discussion with Seán Kissane, Curator, Exhibitions, IMMA.
Admission free, booking essential. Book here.

About Hamad Butt
Hamad Butt was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1962 and moved to live in east London with his family in 1964. He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths from 1987 to 1990, and coincided with the Young British Artists (YBA) generation, many of whom studied alongside him there. His earliest works include countless paintings and prints, which were shown in exhibitions around London and the UK from 1983-87, including at Brixton Gallery, Walker Art Gallery, South London Gallery and London Lesbian and Gay Centre. From the late 1980s, Butt developed unprecedented large-scale sculptural installations using toxic or dangerous materials. His later works were exhibited at John Hansard Gallery (Southampton), Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain), Whitechapel Gallery, Milch, Institute of Contemporary Arts (all London), Manchester Art Gallery, and elsewhere. He continued to make works on paper throughout this time. Butt died of AIDS- related complications in London in 1994, aged 32. A book on his work, Familiars, was published posthumously in 1996. His work is in the permanent collections of Tate and IMMA.