Artist Interrupted @RBSA

“Artist Interrupted; a portrait of Rozanne Hawksley” oil on canvas with copper wire, feathers and iron nails. 112x91cm “Shortly after moving West Wales in the early 2000’s, I came across two assemblages by Rozanne Hawksley. My initial response was that here were the products of a first-rate intelligence. My second musing was why I had not seen her art back in London when I was living there. Why, in a lean period for British art -all seductive surface but gravitas-light, had her name not been regularly heralded in the [inter]national art press? Hers is a body of work which authoritatively identifies what it means to be human, through meditations on love and loss, bereavement and grief, who investigates the drive toward conflict and the desire for peace. This moral, principled and humane artist questions Christianity and its validity in the 21st Century by turning its own artillery of fetishism and ritual on itself. All this is achieved without sermonising, through powerful, memorable visual imagery comprising stitch-work, bone, paint and fabric. These elements are manipulated and transformed to serve a new purpose, akin to the evolutionary process of preadaptation in nature. Hawksley is undoubtedly an artist whose work will, in time, be elevated to its rightful level in the history of art. The relative obscurity in which she currently operates prompts the question: just how many other artists of genuine merit remain undiscovered by the contemporary art scene? How many creative voices remain unheard by today’s influential critics and curators who are intellectually hamstrung by a belief that the provinces are a state of mind and not simply a geographical entity, and who are thereby incapable of looking at anything beyond either the M25 or our solipsistic art education system?” Glenn Ibbitson: ‘Consignment’ Nant Publishing ISBN: 978-0-9563567-2-7

Artist Interrupted will be Exhibited at Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Gallery Portrait Show from 27 July — 19 August 2017.

RBSA Gallery is open 7 days a week and is free entry. Group visits are welcome. If you would like to book a group visit or tour, please contact natalie@rbsa.org.uk.