The Gallery
OfferingsRozanne Hawksley
16 January - 06 March 2010
A Ruthin Craft Centre Exhibition curated by June Hill
Mission Gallery is pleased to host this first major solo retrospective exhibition by Rozanne Hawksley.
Though she works predominantly in textiles and embroidery, there is nothing soft about the work of Rozanne Hawksley. Her extraordinary art covers the great themes of life - love and loss, war and suffering, isolation and the abuse of power by focusing in on intimate details of what they mean to a specific individual. Her installations combine poignant materials - a faded glove, a lily, a photograph or fragment of chiffon to make a powerful, reflective point. As the book by Mary Schoeser issued to accompany the exhibition details, this is an artist of major significance whose story is all the more remarkable for her only coming to national prominence twenty years ago when she was already in her fifties.
Born in the naval town of Portsmouth in 1931, Rozanne Hawksley was a wartime evacuee and grew up at a time when many were mourning those who never returned from the sea. She has drawn from that and other personal experiences in her work. Having trained at the Royal College of Art in the 1950's, she became part of the group that included Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon and John Minton, before moving to America. It was on her return Britain and a postgraduate course at Goldsmiths College in the 1970's that she began using textiles and needlework as an art form. After she was included in the seminal ‘Subversive Stitch' collective exhibition in the 1980's, Rozanne Hawksley began to attract the attention of critics and collectors alike and pieces by her appeared in shows across Britain and Europe. One of her most famous works ‘Pale Armistice' a reflection on the death toll of the First World War, is in the collection of the Imperial War Museum.
Entitled ‘Offerings', this exhibition is the first solo show devoted to Rozanne Hawksley. Dealing as it does with major themes that affect everyone, it will be an unparalleled chance to see the thought provoking, yet unnervingly beautiful work of this remarkable artist.
Publication The first monograph on Rozanne Hawksley, written by Mary Schoeser and published by Ruthin Craft Centre & Lund Humphries, is also available priced £40
