Richard Hamilton: A Postal Card for Mother

The SMS Portfolios were a collaboration between William Copley and Dmitri Petrov, which they published through their Letter Edged in Black Press. Involving some of the most important artists of the twentieth century, and exemplifying the community ethos of the ’60s, SMS bypassed traditional institutions to distribute the artist’s work directly to its audience. Six portfolios containing eleven to thirteen objects were produced in editions of 2000.This SMS edition, by Richard Hamilton, is a sepia picture postcard depicting a crowded British beach, the middle of which opens out to reveal eight accordion-folded black-and-white photographs of the same scene as it gets progressively blown up from a long shot to a close-up blur of a beach ball.