In A Disaster Area: Michael Hawksworth uses intimate scale and fine detail to lead his audience into an imagined reality where personalities and stories inhabit a landscape of book pages, drawing and intricate collage. The exhibition focuses on a series of abstract portraits rendered using the combination of painstakingly detailed drawing and collage which has come to define Michael's practice.

The marks and shapes he creates are abstract but suggestive of microscopic or other-worldly forms, while buried text elements - some real and some constructed - create additional levels of meaning. In A Disaster Area: Michael Hawksworth uses intimate scale and fine detail to lead his audience into an imagined reality where personalities and stories inhabit a landscape of book pages, drawing and intricate collage. The exhibition focuses on a series of abstract portraits rendered using the combination of painstakingly detailed drawing and collage which has come to define Michael's practice.

The marks and shapes he creates are abstract but suggestive of microscopic or other-worldly forms, while buried text elements - some real and some constructed - create additional levels of meaning. Together these ambiguous suggestions gently direct the viewer towards encountering something of the personality of the subject. While these are not portraits in the conventional sense, these are works which pick up on the nuances and depths of personality, revealing, hiding and complicating the idea of capturing an individual's likeness through art.

The way modern art provided ways into alternate realities was what initially appealed to Michael as a teenager, although his focus shifted to literature and he studied literature and art history at Victoria University in the mid 1980s. Time spent travelling after university and experiencing the international contemporary art scene drew him away from writing and reignited his interest in art. Michael completed a Diploma of Visual Art at EIT, Napier, followed by a Masters Degree in Fine Art from Elam, University of Auckland. He currently lives in Napier, tutoring in drawing and studio practice at EIT while pursuing his own practice as an artist.

a disaster area has been supported by the Mary Vigor Brown Trust, The Gilded Leaf and Creative Communities.

Gallery Floor Talk with Michael Hawksworth
Thursday 19 March 2009 at 6pm
Free entry

In A Disaster Area
Michael Hawksworth
7 March - 17 May 2009
Exhibition Opening: Friday 6 March at 5.30pm

20/02/09