THINGS HAPPEN
Richard Hawkins (1961 - ) x Pati Hill (1921 - 2014) x Artur Varela (1937 - 2017)
You’ll note the #03 of richardhawkins03, #s 01 and 02 were shut down for “violating community guidelines”. After which it then became a kind of game to hide dicks behind popup stickers or as payoffs for viewers willing to stick it through to the end of longer clips. There’s no grand schema to how the clips are edited or formatted, just working with/ around the app’s built-in limitations and some consideration for how quickly attentions lag and what content (primarily dick, as I’ve said, notably never my own) might make a viewer return for more. On the user end, the 10 minutes that it takes to whip up a gif, some stic- kers and an audio snippet to showcase the freshest pic of a shirtless popstar or indulge the obscenity of US politics fulfilled a need for quick gratification. Through lockdowns past and current semi-reclusion the posts feel like far-off distant smoke signals spelling it out « hey, don’t forget me » – I’m not dead yet.
Shoutouts to d_schlong, mathieumalouf, andrej_dubravsky, sunlightremedy_, jlncc, g_u_z_z_l_e_r and jacuzzi_brains who appear or are referenced somewhere herein.
- Richard Hawkins, January 2023
In 2000, following the death of her third husband, Pati Hill lived surrounded by a small brigade of cats and occasionally dined with them on her workshop table in the midst of her xerographs. Once the table was laid, she randomly threw their food on white sheets of paper, the same she used for work. She kept these sheets onto which she drew characters based on the traces left by the cat food.
- Baptiste Pinteaux, March 2021
In a country dominated by state culture and where state culture makes the market and
the curriculum Artur Varela has for decades pursued a silent and muted work. Good for him. The time is for pose and best-sellers, kitsch and entertainment, decoration and public relations, to look and to appear. And in a time like this, creators, like lions at a jackal feast, may as well stay away.
- José Amaro Dionísio, October 1993
Special Thanks to Florence Bonnefous, Amanda Booth, Galerie Air de Paris, Richard Hawkins, and the FRIENDS OF ARTUR, a society initiated in Lisbon in 2021 for the pre- servation of rare artist species.
Room 1
Artur Varela, Untitled, wood, 160 x 65 x 70 cm, 1965 Pati Hill, Untitled, xerograph, c.2000
Pati Hill, Untitled, xerograph, c.2000
Pati Hill, Untitled, xerograph, c.2000
Room 2
Richard Hawkins, Four short videos regarding Artaud, video, 5’30’’, 2023 Pati Hill, Untitled, drawing, cat food, c.2000
Pati Hill, Untitled, drawing, cat food, c.2000
Kitchen
Richard Hawkins, Untitled, video, 20’25’’, 2023
Richard Hawkins (1961, Texas) lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions in- clude Greene Naftali, New York (2022, 2019, 2018); Galerie Buchholz, Köln (2020, 2018); Tate, Liverpool (2014); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2013); and the Art Institute of Chicago, which traveled to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010). His practice spans sculpture, collage, digital art, drawing, painting, film and writing. From classical Greek sculpture to pop hits, Victorian era literature and the paintings of the great symbolists, his work often focuses on the young male form, navigating taboos and the pleasure of looking at the human body.
Pati Hill (1921-2014) was known as a model, journalist and writer when she produced her first works using a photocopier in the early 1970s. Her work has recently been show at Art Basel (2021), Galerie Air de Paris (2020), Kunsthalle Zurich (2020), Essex Street, New York (2018). This is Ampersand’s third time showing her work, the most recent chapter in an ongoing overview of her life and work.
Artur Varela (1937-2017) was a Portuguese artist whose work included sculpture, painting, film, and satirical illustration. He lived a substantial part of his life in Holland and several years in France where he exhibited widely, as well as Italy and Belgium. In 1973 he re- turned to Portugal, which he had remained viscerally connected to throughout his career, reflected in the often irreverent, iconoclastic work he continued to exhibit in his native country, and which augmented his status as an outsider.