Anna Miles Gallery

PETER HAWKESBY

Bone Thrones

05/11/22 — 26/11/22

Remaking works created at an earlier time and reimagining them within entirely new contexts, is an indication of true inventiveness; that inscrutable desire born of unrelenting attentiveness to the process of making art. Such is the story of an encrusted tile Peter Hawkesby made in 1999, overlooked at the time and sequestered, forgotten in a cardboard carton, the contents of which were revealed some 20 years later when the artist relocated from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland to Ōtepoti Dunedin. Hawkesby’s tile provides the prima facie case for Bone Thrones, his latest ensemble of ceramic works.

In its original iteration, the tile was a bed for a bevy of slumbering ‘ticks’ — the ‘tick’ being the most enduring motif in this artist’s creative enterprise. In the current evocation, the ticks feel spent, reclined, almost cadaverous. Hawkesby’s title, Bone Thrones suggests portentousness, but his throne is a cipher for celebration, a ritualised occasion for aesthetic conviviality. The artist has simply flipped the bed, relinquishing lying down in favour of standing upright. The structural apparatus needed to maintain this vertical orientation is as endowed with ornamental traits and decorative attributes as the embedded ticks.

Like anagrams to be descrambled and re-conjugated, these ‘thrones’ are unacculturated objects, corporeal totems laced with social pathologies and psychological desire. A muscle memory is being exercised, but the specific contents are rendered vague. These objects are monuments to the texture of memory but make no claims to its reliability — their ‘dust to dust’ religiosity, a form of indemnity against loss.

Hawkesby’s thrones often demanded a second storey, a coif, or crest, crowning what he euphemistically refers to as ‘billboards’ for the bones. The artist deploys his aesthetic arsenal ambidextrously. His two-faced edifices cast doubt on simple designations of front and back. The eye is denied a central focus and displaced via a sophisticated dishevelment. Hawkesby is the master of bricolage. His wilful capriciousness and knowing delinquency disturbs our derived notions of sculptural elegance and the art of craft.

-Richard Fahey

See more by Peter Hawkesby

Tender Brick: The Material Epiphanies of Peter Hawkesby at CoCA Toi Moroki

Peter Hawkesby: Tick on a Brick

11. Bonethrone framed with turquoise stop, 2022
Ceramic, 400mm H
SOLD

Bonethrone framed with turquoise stop, 2022 (alternate view)
SOLD
11.

Peter Hawkesby’s ceramic career dates to the late 1970s. In 1980 his work was included in the prescient Denis Cohn Gallery exhibition Five by Five alongside that of Bronwynne Cornish, Denis O’Connor, John Parker and Warren Tippett. In 1984 Hawkesby left Aotearoa to live in Tokyo. Returning to Tāmaki Makaurau in the early 1990s, he spent two decades as proprietor of Alleluja Café in Karangahape Rd’s St Kevin’s Arcade. Hawkesby returned to full-time ceramic making in 2015. His exhibition, Scratch a Cenotaph opened at Anna Miles Gallery in 2018 and was soon followed by MNVWZ Antics in 2019, Professor Tick & Company, with Madeleine Child, Cheryl Lucas and Richard Stratton (McLeavey Gallery, 2020) and Dirty Ceramics (Dowse Art Museum, 2019–20). In 2020 Tender Brick: The Material Epiphanies of Peter Hawkesby, curated by RichardFahey, was developed by Objectspace and later toured to the Sarjeant Art Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui (2021) and CoCA Toi Moroki, Ōtautahi Christchurch (2022). Hawkesby lives and works in Ōtepoti Dunedin. His work is represented in public and private collections including those of Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, The Chartwell Collection at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Dowse Art Museum, MTG Hawkes Bay Tai Ahuriri and Te Papa Tongarewa.

1. & 2. Magnificent ‘M’s, 2022
Ceramic, pair, 500mm H
SOLD

3. Bonethrone I (Orange Spot), 2022
Ceramic, 340mm H

3. Bonethrone I (orange spot), 2022 (alternate view)

4. Bonethrone III (Orange Spot), 2022
Ceramic, 310mm H

4. Bonethrone III (orange spot), 2022 (alternate view)

5. Bonethrone II (Terracotta Wink), 2022
Ceramic, 330mm H

5. Bonethrone II (Terracotta Wink), 2022 (alternate view)

3. and 5. (As Pair) Bonethrone I & II, 2022
Ceramic, 330mm H & 340mm H respectively

6. Bonethrone Fan Hamper, 2022
Ceramic, 360mm H
SOLD

6. Bonethrone Fan Hamper, 2022 (alternate view)
SOLD

7. Bonethrone Cockle cliffs, 2022
Ceramic, 355mmH

7. Bonethrone Cockle cliffs, 2022 (alternate view)

8. Bonethrone Geology, 2022 (alternate view)

8. Bonethrone Geology, 2022
Ceramic, 360mm H

9. Bonethrone Rolling Up, 2022
Ceramic, 400mm H
SOLD

9. Bonethrone Rolling Up, 2022 (alternate view)
SOLD

10. Noisy Boy, 2021
Ceramic, 420mm H

10. Noisy Boy, 2021 (alternate view)

12. Bonethrone M Sign, 2022
Ceramic, 370mm H
SOLD

12. Bonethrone M Sign, 2022 (alternate view)
SOLD

14. Bonethrone Putiki Bay, 2022
Ceramic, 370mm H
SOLD

14. Bonethrone Putiki Bay, 2022 (alternate view)
SOLD

13. Beached M & 14. Bonethrone Putiki Bay

15. Billboard Soft M, 2022
Ceramic, 310mm H

15. Billboard Soft M, 2022 (alternate view)

16. Bonethrone gate, 2022
Ceramic, 300mm H
SOLD

16. Bonethrone gate, 2022 (alternate view)
SOLD

16. & 17. Bonethrone Gate & Black Corrugate HOLD

18. Bonethrone Pah Rd, 2022
Ceramic, 290mm H

18. Bonethrone Pah Rd, 2022 (alternate view)

19. Bonethrone kernel, 2022
Ceramic, 340mm H

20. Bonethrone fan filter, 2022
Ceramic, 340mmH

20. Bonethrone fan filter, 2022 (alternate view)

21. The Terracotta Chrysalis Tick, 2022
Ceramic, 335mm H
SOLD

22. Who knows whose nose, 2021
Ceramic, 400mm H
SOLD

Who knows whose nose, 2021 (alternate view)
SOLD