Hamad Masood Butt (9 January 1962 – 25 September 1994) was a British artist of Pakistani heritage who made a series of pioneering works in the early 1990s which sought to bring art into conversation with science, specifically in critical response to the

AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

crisis.

Early life and education

Butt was born in

Lahore Lahore ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, Pakistani province of Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, second-largest city in Pakistan, after Karachi, and ...

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

in 1962 and moved with his family to

East London East London is the part of London, England, east of the ancient City of London and north of the River Thames as it begins to widen. East London developed as London Docklands, London's docklands and the primary industrial centre. The expansion of ...

in 1964. He was the second of five siblings. He was raised in the

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

faith. As a child he lived in Manor Park and

Ilford Ilford is a large List of areas of London, town in East London, England, northeast of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Redbridge, Ilford is within the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Greater London. It had a po ...

. He undertook a series of courses in art from 1981 until 1987, including a foundation year at

Goldsmiths, University of London Goldsmiths, University of London, formerly Goldsmiths College, University of London, is a constituent research university of the University of London. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by ...

and short courses in

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proces ...

and other media at

Morley College Morley College is a specialist adult education and further education college in London, England. The college has three main campuses, one in Waterloo on the South Bank, and two in West London namely in North Kensington and in Chelsea, the ...

and

Central Saint Martins Central Saint Martins is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art university in London, England. The college offers full-time courses at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and a variety of short ...

. He enrolled on the BA Fine Art degree programme at

from 1987 to 1990. There he was part of a lively cohort of art students including

Damien Hirst Damien Steven Hirst (; né Brennan; born 7 June 1965) is an English artist and art collector. He was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest ...

Angela Bulloch Angela Bulloch (born 1966 in Rainy River, Ontario, Canada), is a Canadian artist who often works with sound and installation; she is recognised as one of the Young British Artists. Bulloch lives and works in Berlin. Life and career Bulloch stud ...

Mat Collishaw Matthew "Mat" Collishaw Royal Photographic Society#Distinctions and qualifications, Hon. FRPS (born 6 January 1966) is a contemporary British artist based in London. Work Collishaw's work uses photography and video. With an early foundati ...

Angus Fairhurst Angus Fairhurst (4 October 1966 – 29 March 2008) was an English artist working in installation, photography and video. He was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). Life and work Angus Fairhurst was born in Pembury, Kent. Having attende ...

Michael Landy Michael Landy (born 1963) is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). He is best known for the performance piece installation '' Break Down'' (2001), in which he destroyed all his possessions, and for the ''Art Bin'' project (2010) at the ...

Gillian Wearing Gillian Wearing CBE, RA (born 10 December 1963) is an English conceptual artist, one of the Young British Artists, and winner of the 1997 Turner Prize. In 2007 Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. H ...

and Simon Patterson, many of whom would become known as the

Young British Artists The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Golds ...

(Butt was not affiliated).

Career

Butt graduated from

in 1990. He presented his first major installation, ''Transmission'' as his degree show in June 1990. The installation included a circle of glass books (now part of the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

Collection), a series of works on paper, an animated video, and a vitrine containing live flies. The latter anticipated a similar work, ''A Thousand Years'' (1990) by

, a fellow student at

, who showed the work as part of a group exhibition later in 1990. ''Transmission'' was subsequently shown in an amended form as part of an exhibition at the short-lived Milch Gallery, run by his friend Lawren Maben. In 1992 Butt showed ''Familiars'', a tripartite installation of dangerous-looking sculptures constructed of glass and steel in precarious setups that appear to threaten to release toxic matter into the immediate environment. They featured the elemental materials

bromine Bromine is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Br and atomic number 35. It is a volatile red-brown liquid at room temperature that evaporates readily to form a similarly coloured vapour. Its properties are intermediate between th ...

(as a liquid),

chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between ...

(as a gas), and

iodine Iodine is a chemical element; it has symbol I and atomic number 53. The heaviest of the stable halogens, it exists at standard conditions as a semi-lustrous, non-metallic solid that melts to form a deep violet liquid at , and boils to a vi ...

(as solid crystals). ''Substance Sublimation Units'' is a kinetic sculpture that uses a heating element to sublimate the crystals into a violet gas inside a series of glass chambers organised into the shape of a ladder. ''Cradle'' consists of up to 18 glass spheres containing yellow

gas suspended in a form resembling a

Newton's cradle Newton's cradle is a device, usually made of metal, that demonstrates the principles of Momentum, conservation of momentum and conservation of energy in physics with swinging Sphere, spheres. When one sphere at the end is lifted and released, i ...

, a device designed to demonstrate the principles of

conservation of momentum In Newtonian mechanics, momentum (: momenta or momentums; more specifically linear momentum or translational momentum) is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. ...

and

conservation of energy The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be Conservation law, ''conserved'' over time. In the case of a Closed system#In thermodynamics, closed system, the principle s ...

in physics, and popular in the 1980s as an executive toy. ''Familiars'' was first shown in 1992 at the

John Hansard Gallery The John Hansard Gallery is a Contemporary art gallery, contemporary visual art gallery and part of the University of Southampton. History The John Hansard Building was originally located in building 50 in the University of Southampton bui ...

in Southampton. Its director the

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

Stephen Foster commissioned the work, which enabled Butt to undertake the complex fabrication of the works in collaboration with chemists and technical glassblowers at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

. ''Familiars'' is described by critics as invoking existential themes in its provocation of fear, anxiety or dread. Art critic

Stuart Morgan Stuart Edward Morgan (born 23 September 1949 in Swansea) is a Welsh former professional footballer and football manager. A defender (association football), central defender, he made 222 appearances in the Football League playing for Torquay Uni ...

wrote in a review in ''

Frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...

'' that, on encountering Butt's ''Substance Sublimation Unit'' (1992), "Watching iodine crystals inside the rungs of a hollow glass ladder heat and turn into vapour stresses the themes of metamorphosis, disguise or sheer instability, and visitors become more and more uneasy as they sense comparisons between their own existence and that of these volatile substances." Throughout his work of the 1990s, Butt devised encounters between

art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...

and

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

. He was interested in

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

, as evidenced in his regular usage of the figure of the

triffid The triffid is a List of fictional plants, fictional tall, mobile, carnivorous plant species, created by John Wyndham in his 1951 novel ''The Day of the Triffids'', which has since been adapted for film and television. The word "triffid" has ...

, as sourced from the cover of the 1963

Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

paperback edition of

John Wyndham John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (; 10 July 1903 – 11 March 1969) was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his name ...

's novel ''

The Day of the Triffids ''The Day of the Triffids'' is a 1951 post-apocalyptic novel by the English science fiction author John Wyndham. After most people in the world are blinded by an apparent meteor shower, an aggressive species of plant starts killing people. A ...

'': it was etched into the glass books in his first major work ''Transmission'' as well and animated in the accompanying video piece. Butt also made many paintings, drawings and works on paper. ''Familiars'' was posthumously included in the exhibition ''Rites of Passage: Art at the End of the Century'' (curated by

and Frances Morris) at Tate Gallery (now

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...

) in 1995 alongside works by

Louise Bourgeois Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (; 25 December 191131 May 2010) was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a varie ...

Robert Gober Robert Gober (born September 12, 1954) is an American sculptor. His work is often related to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors, and legs. Early life and education Gober was born in Wallingford, Connecticut.Mona Hatoum Mona Hatoum (; born 1952) is a Palestinians, British-Palestinian multimedia and installation artist who lives in London. Biography Mona Hatoum was born in 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon, to State of Palestine, Palestinian parents. Although born in Leba ...

Susan Hiller Susan Hiller (March 7, 1940–January 28, 2019) was a US-born, British conceptual artist who lived in London, United Kingdom. Her practice spanned a broad range of media, including installation, video, photography, painting, sculpture, per ...

Bill Viola William John Viola Jr. ( , ; January 25, 1951 – July 12, 2024) was an American video artist whose artistic expression depended upon electronic, sound, and image technology in new media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human ...

and others. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fi ...

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an modernism, artistic and cultural centre on The Mall (London), The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps a ...

, London, and again at

, the latter as part of its exhibition of the

permanent collection in 2023–24. The first museum retrospective of his work, ''Hamad Butt: Apprehensions'', curated by Dominic Johnson, took place at the

Irish Museum of Modern Art The Irish Museum of Modern Art (), also known as IMMA, is Ireland's leading national institution for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art. It is located in Kilmainham, Dublin. History Irish art collector Gordon Lam ...

(IMMA), Dublin (December 2024 to May 2025) and tours to the

, London (June to September 2025).

Death

Butt died of

-related

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

St Mary's Hospital, London St Mary's Hospital is a teaching hospital in Paddington, in the City of Westminster, London, founded in 1845. Since the UK's first academic health science centre was created in 2008, it has been operated by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust ...

References

External links

Hamad Butt Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Butt, Hamad 1964 births 1994 deaths 20th-century British male artists 20th-century English LGBTQ people 20th-century Pakistani male artists Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London Artists from Lahore Artists from the London Borough of Newham British gay artists British contemporary artists AIDS-related deaths in England AIDS-related deaths in the United Kingdom English people of Pakistani descent LGBTQ people from London Pakistani emigrants to England Pakistani LGBTQ artists People from Ilford People from Manor Park, London