Camilla Wagstaff

Bill Hawkins is thinking about calling his debut commercial solo at Mildura’s NAP

Contemporary The Idiot.

The Melbourne-born, Düsseldorf-based artist has been thinking a lot about the different

types of intelligence – intellectual, emotional, spatial, bodily – involved in art making. He’s

noticed how often we privilege the intellectual above all else (in art and in life), overlooking

the fact that other types of intelligence carry their own sophistication and complexity.

In a similar vein, he’s been reading up on emotions. “I am interested in emotions because

they are an automatic, non-cognitive judgement and carry an intelligence imbedded within

them,” he tells me over Zoom. “I think this is the type of thinking artists are good at. My

strength as an artist is that I can be an idiot when it counts.”

This sort of intuitive, pluralistic thinking lies at the heart of Hawkins’ practice. At the

moment he’s making small paintings of the same size (20 by 28 centimetres), with a

characteristically muted colour palette and rich affect. There is a lot of variation between

each painting, making for a lot of chaotic juxtapositions from one canvas to another. But the

chaos doesn’t make the work any less critically informed or conceptually rigorous.

“Previously in my practice I was looking for a single framework to apply to my paintings.

Now, I am consciously letting the different themes in my work exist in a chaotic scramble,”

he says. “I try not to privilege one line of thought over the other and don’t hold onto

frameworks too tightly. I think I am attracted to this because I like the idea of a pluralistic

society and pluralistic thinking, especially about art.”

The artist also uses a plurality of materials in his works – eggshells, lentils, hessian, felt,

marble dust. Recently he’s been collecting his own fingernails (“I like that it’s kind of

twisted,” he says with a smile) but he’s not entirely sure where they’ll end up. Collectors can

expect no less bedlam for the NAP debut – think carboard sculptures, works in wire,

concrete, sticks, pebbles, and bottle caps squashed into the Düsseldorf pavement. “I’m

always keeping my eye out for something new to use in my paintings,” says Hawkins. “New

materials are exciting to me because they open new ways of thinking.”

Hawkins believes his experiences with ACT therapy – a clinical psychotherapy taking

inspiration from Zen Buddhism which is part of his depression treatment – has profoundly

influenced the way he relates to artmaking. “I am attracted to thinkers who are honest and

open about their doubts,” he says. “I like the idea of an artist that doesn’t position

themselves as an all-knowing expert in their own practice. Sometimes we have no idea

what’s going on, and that’s kind of great.”

In 2022, Hawkins was awarded a prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, which

saw him spend three months at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. Finding fresh

inspiration in the European approach to art academia, he was quickly accepted into the

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he is currently studying. “It has been a dream of mine to

spend some time here,” he says. “A lot of artists I admire have studied or taught at the

academy over its long history.”

Closer to home, Hawkins is the founder of the Melbourne School of Contemporary Art, a

space in which academics can create short courses on topics they are passionate about

without the constraints of university teaching. “It’s a very simple format: find interesting

people to create courses and just let them do whatever they want,” says Hawkins. Along

with his NAP debut in June this year, Hawkins exhibits at Cellar Door, artist Mitch Cairns’

project space, in February.