Peter Hawkesby

Peter Hawkesby’s Ōtepoti studio has the ambience of an eyrie. From a concrete block tower above a panel beater’s spray booth, the artist surveys the rooftops of this well-preserved Victorian city, an ever-changing skyscape punctuated by topknots practical and fantastical — chimney pots variously lashed and buffeted against the weather, seagulls on finials and the golden curve of the Bell of the nearby Bell Tea Factory.

Stretched like bunting across the sunny studio window for many months last year was a line-up of works Hawkesby calls ‘Marions’. The magnificent ‘M’ atop these tottering ceramic hieroglyphs salutes the artist’s mysterious Aunt Marion. The letters are there to tell a story that as he says, “There really is no way to tell.” Marion turned up in Hawkesby’s imagination long ago in a convertible MKII Zephyr, piloted into Cockle Bay in the mid 1950s by her then boyfriend. Shortly afterwards Marion returned in more ignominious circumstances. According to family legend, she lent a man money to buy a yacht. He sailed off without her. Soon Marion quit New Zealand, never married and never returned.

The present exhibition, Rotunda, is a gathering of four different types of ceramic compendium: Marions, Rotundas, Loops, and Jungle Gyms. The group’s ethos of ceremony and play feels familiar. An effervescent approach has been detectable in Hawkesby’s work since his clay career took hold on the cusp of the 1970s and 80s. Scratch a Cenotaph, his 2018 exhibition, which acknowledged significant individuals in his life, was rich in references to the votive ceramic tradition. The parade of balls and ‘triple slippers’ his recent Modern Ming vases were plumped-up on is ample evidence of a hard-wired predilection for aesthetic elevation.

In Rotunda, Hawkesby plays a consummate game of compare and contrast by serving his celebratory grammar four ways. The lushly scaffolded Jungle Gyms are four-sided answers to the sparely composed Marions. Both are draped in M, N and Z letter forms. The Marions deploy ceramic typography as towering filigree. In the Gyms, no negative space is permitted. Crevices are exuberantly plugged by loops, wodges, ticks and glossy balls. Occasional bagel-shaped loops droop from the edges. These Jungle Gyms have little to do with the cold steel bars various of us once attempted to fly from. Hawkesby recalls forms festooned by upside down kids in brightly coloured hand-knit cardigans. The charm of these strange structures of the C20th playground lies in their capacity for adornment.

Rotunda is a fitting title for the exhibition, given Hawkesby’s preference for making things ‘in the round’. Typically, he assembles his works on a rotating Lazy Susan, a banquet item repurposed for trialling bits and pieces from his sprawling storehouse of ceramic components. The rotunda also holds personal significance. Hawkesby describes these cupola-topped platforms as magnetic and unexplained. “I don’t think in my life I’ve ever seen them used officially. My first recollection of them is of empty playthings that kids rushed to. Even our parents didn’t understand what their use was. They became our fantasy of strange hubs left by a previous generation.”

In recent times the rotunda’s connection with processes of colonial imposition rather than architectural pleasure has been highlighted. Lucy Mackintosh’s 2021 book, Shifting Grounds provides detailed account of the rolling out of a Victorian picturesque British landscape; tea kiosk, bandstand, duck ponds and playing fields, at Pukekawa Auckland Domain at the time of the 1913-14 Auckland exhibition. That particular bandstand, gifted by a biscuit manufacturer, is a remnant of a scheme that expunged the long history and cultural significance of this site to Māori.

Hawkesby’s Rotunda makes no argument for renovating the reputation of the imported language the bandstand belongs to. However, his work makes a powerful case against erasure. In acknowledging how public architectural fabric gets lodged in the imagination like the bunks, wardrobes and hiding places of childhood, he underlines the potency of the cultural space that exists between what we forget and what we remember.

More images to come

Peter Hawkesby was born in Cockle Bay, Tāmaki Makaurau in 1950. Recent exhibitions include: Modern Ming, (2023), Anna Miles Gallery; Contemporary Dunedin Ceramics, (2025), Brett McDowell Gallery; Dirty Ceramics, Dowse Art Museum (2019); Professor Tick & Company, McLeavey Gallery (2020); and Tender Brick: The Material Epiphanies of Peter Hawkesby, curated by Richard Fahey for Objectspace (2020) that toured to the Sarjeant Art Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui (2021) and CoCA Toi Moroki, Otauhahi Christchurch (2022).

Hawkesby’s work is represented in public and private collections including those of Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Chartwell, Dowse Art Museum, MTG Hawkes Bay Tau Ahuriri, Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand and Tūhura Otago Museum.

Photographs: Samuel Hartnett
With thanks to Amanda and Julien Thery of The Vitrine, 5 McDonald St, Morningside, for plinths featured in the exhibition