ROBERT HAWKINS: WORLD WIDE OPEN, PV
Private View of paintings by Robert Hawkins, presented by The Residence Gallery in a new collaboration with The Trampery Old Street.
In a moment defined by planetary anxiety, data-saturated vision, faux scientific statements, and cultural whiplash, Robert Hawkins returns to the image of the Earth — not as a symbol of unity, but as something split, exposed, luminous, and volatile.
World Wide Open, presented by The Residence Gallery in a new collaboration with The Trampery Old Street, transforms the building’s ground-floor reception into an improvised street-facing exhibition space — visible from the windows on Old Street and available to visit by appointment until 9 January. It is less a traditional gallery show than an intervention: a rupture in the everyday architecture of work, transit, and productivity.
Hawkins’ paintings geo-surgically dissect the planet, revealing its core in a blaze of technicolour, erupting against the venue’s bright orange walls. Executed on both traditional stretched canvases and the panels of bargain-bin “Flying Tiger” frames, a necessary choice that collapses the increasingly meaningless gap between “high” and “low” culture. Duchamp, meet discount homeware. With childlike glee and surrealist bite, Hawkins turns the natural world upside down, revealing the absurdity — and violence — of humanity’s attempt to dominate it.
Born in 1951 in Sunnyvale, California, Hawkins moved to nearby San Francisco early, experiencing Haight-Ashbury, the flowering of gay counterculture, disco and early punk scenes, which imprinted themselves on his vision. By 1978, he had made his way to the Emerald City of New York, met the Wizard and made a name for himself in the art world. Now living and working in London, his practice has developed into what Glenn O’Brien once observed:
"Robert Hawkins is not a big famous artist because he has resisted all attempts to make him that… Now that he has a large, madcap, ferociously witty, and startlingly original body of work behind him… it’s time he can relax and enjoy making artwork on his own roving, druidical, picaroon, anarchic, swashbuckling terms."
World Wide Open marks the launch of a new curatorial programme led by Ingrid Welsh, Director of The Residence Gallery, developed in partnership with The Trampery Old Street. Currently part of the Evo Pioneer Programme, Welsh is reimagining how art inhabits hybrid spaces — blurring boundaries between workplace and exhibition, private and public, institution and experiment. This collaboration aims to expand access, create visibility for artists, and position art as an ongoing, open conversation within the fabric of the city.
The exhibition is viewable through the Old Street windows on weekdays. Appointments can be made via info@theresidencegallery.com.
Private View tickets are free but limited and must be booked here on Eventbrite.
Private View of paintings by Robert Hawkins, presented by The Residence Gallery in a new collaboration with The Trampery Old Street.
In a moment defined by planetary anxiety, data-saturated vision, faux scientific statements, and cultural whiplash, Robert Hawkins returns to the image of the Earth — not as a symbol of unity, but as something split, exposed, luminous, and volatile.
World Wide Open, presented by The Residence Gallery in a new collaboration with The Trampery Old Street, transforms the building’s ground-floor reception into an improvised street-facing exhibition space — visible from the windows on Old Street and available to visit by appointment until 9 January. It is less a traditional gallery show than an intervention: a rupture in the everyday architecture of work, transit, and productivity.
Hawkins’ paintings geo-surgically dissect the planet, revealing its core in a blaze of technicolour, erupting against the venue’s bright orange walls. Executed on both traditional stretched canvases and the panels of bargain-bin “Flying Tiger” frames, a necessary choice that collapses the increasingly meaningless gap between “high” and “low” culture. Duchamp, meet discount homeware. With childlike glee and surrealist bite, Hawkins turns the natural world upside down, revealing the absurdity — and violence — of humanity’s attempt to dominate it.
Born in 1951 in Sunnyvale, California, Hawkins moved to nearby San Francisco early, experiencing Haight-Ashbury, the flowering of gay counterculture, disco and early punk scenes, which imprinted themselves on his vision. By 1978, he had made his way to the Emerald City of New York, met the Wizard and made a name for himself in the art world. Now living and working in London, his practice has developed into what Glenn O’Brien once observed:
"Robert Hawkins is not a big famous artist because he has resisted all attempts to make him that… Now that he has a large, madcap, ferociously witty, and startlingly original body of work behind him… it’s time he can relax and enjoy making artwork on his own roving, druidical, picaroon, anarchic, swashbuckling terms."
World Wide Open marks the launch of a new curatorial programme led by Ingrid Welsh, Director of The Residence Gallery, developed in partnership with The Trampery Old Street. Currently part of the Evo Pioneer Programme, Welsh is reimagining how art inhabits hybrid spaces — blurring boundaries between workplace and exhibition, private and public, institution and experiment. This collaboration aims to expand access, create visibility for artists, and position art as an ongoing, open conversation within the fabric of the city.
The exhibition is viewable through the Old Street windows on weekdays. Appointments can be made via info@theresidencegallery.com.
Private View tickets are free but limited and must be booked here on Eventbrite.
Good to know
Highlights
- 2 hours
- In person
Location
The Trampery Old Street - Studios and Coworking
239 Old Street
London EC1V 9EY
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