EXHIBITION DATES : In person and online from 14/2 – 29/3/25
INTRODUCTION :
Inspiration continues to be gathered from a specifically intimate and deep rooted relationship with ‘place’, cultivated through a heritage where his family’s farm adjoined the Bristol Channel. First dissected by the building of the motorway and then again by expansion of the docks, most of what Hardwick grew up with has now gone. This story remains typical of all too many locations across the country and further afield, which continue to experience ongoing dramatic transition in the name of progress…
Read more/less
In a very literal sense Hardwick has witnessed his personal history and the intertwined landscape of his childhood, become fractured, buried and now lost. Remaining land, fenced off, now awaits development with much of it so heavily polluted that it could no longer be used for crops. This same area is infused by the light of the nearby sea, coloured by countless years of pollution from its industrial neighbours. The new world has, in an all to real sense, devoured the old.
Hardwick new paintings are of places both witnessed and places envisioned. They are simultaneously pertinent, nostalgic and prophetic, reflecting the role of the romantic tradition of painters such a John Constable and Paul Nash. These are ghost like paintings, where these edge-land and wilderness zones can’t ever quite escape the subtle reminders of our human interference which subverts or jostles with the pastoral.
Whilst continuing to embrace and enhance a tradition, Hardwick’s paintings also continue to subvert through his uncoventional technical approach. Works are heavily layered using societal left overs - substance
surplus to modern need, found or discarded. Paints and varnish are often sourced from recycling centres or skips, added to plaster, plastics, ash, soils, pigments, spray paint or glue applied impasto over wire, felt, geotextile membrane, canvas, wood and other unconventional materials. The resultant geological and palimpsestic surface reflects the confusion, complexity and proceeding redevelopment of our existential interplay with the wider subject. The exquisite subtlety of colour and tone built within the surface is often contrasted by a visceral rawness, nurtured or attacked, with love and indiscriminate fervour - evoking a nature “red in tooth and claw” and our “red in tooth and claw” treatment of it - reinforcing our ongoing ecological abandon. These are places to which we feel a simultaneous connect and disconnect.
Andrew Hardwick’s eoeuvre makes constant reference to concepts of change, transience and loss. It is not just the rendering of a place, the memory of which becomes all too easily discarded to the scrap heap. The real loss maybe our place within it, as a direct consequence of our contemporary concerns, which may well become inconsequential in the long run. Uncultivated thought could lead us further towards inhabiting a place that we may no longer be able to call home.
Joseph Clarke, 2022
BIOGRAPHY :
Andrew Hardwick was born in Bristol, England in 1961 where he still resides on a smallholding near Royal Portbury Docks. He is an elected Academician at the Royal West of England Academy. Works have been exhibited extensively including numerous public shows including ‘Earth Digging Deep in British Art 1781-2022’, alongside Lamorna Birch, William Blake, John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, William Henry Hunt, Richard Long, John Martin, David Nash, John Nash, Paul Nash, Samuel Palmer, John Piper, Yinka Shonibare, Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland and J. M. W. Turner among others. Works can be found in collections worldwide. Andrew Hardwick is represented by Anima Mundi.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2025
Uncultivated Land (Solo), Anima Mundi, St Ives
2024
Wounded Land (Solo), Bridport Arts Centre, Dorset
Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London
2023
Lost Landscapes, Plough Arts Centre, Devon
The Art of Making, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
2022
The Last of the Silence (Solo), Anima Mundi, St Ives
Earth - Digging Deep (British Art 1781-2022), Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
Forgotten Land (Solo), The Spring, Havant
Wilderness and Warehouses (Solo), Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot
2021
Bath Society of Artists, Victoria Gallery, Bath
2020
Ground (solo), Colston Yard, Bristol
2019
Emerging Landscapes, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
Summer Show, Royal Academy, London
Edgelands (solo), Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery, Stockport
Edgelands (solo), Atkinson Gallery, Millfield, Street
2018
Fragmented Land (solo), Ruskin Mill, Nailsworth
2017
Explorations of the Sky, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
Wilderness (solo), South Hill Park, Bracknell
Remnant (solo), North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford
2016
Palimpsest (solo), Anima Mundi, St Ives
Summer Show, Royal Academy, London
2015
Scarred Wilderness (solo), Millennium, St Ives
2014
The Power of the Sea, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
Material Gesture (solo), Sidcot Arts Centre, Sidcot
2013
Moor (solo), Millennium, St Ives
2011
Evanescent Earth (solo), Millennium, St Ives
2010
Tidal Wilderness (solo), Victoria Art Gallery, Bath
Autumn Show, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
2009
Where the Sea Meets the Estuary (solo), Burton Art Gallery, Bideford
2008
Estuary (solo), Newport Museum & Art Gallery, Newport
2007
Atruim Gallery (solo), Bournmouth University, Bournemouth
2006
Forgotten Ground (solo), Central Art Gallery, Ashton-under-Lyne
2005
Fragmented Land (solo), Folkestone Museum and Art Gallery, Folkstone
2004
Between Land and Tide (solo), South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel, Ireland
Partial View curated by Matthew Collins, Hot Bath Gallery, Bath
2003
Veiled Earth (solo), Otter Gallery, University College Chichester
2001
Earth, Sea and Sky (2 person), Kirkby Gallery, Liverpool
2000
Between Land and Water (solo), The Phoenix Gallery, Brighton
1999
Elemental Dynamics (solo), Flax International Arts Centre, Belfast
Transient Land (solo), The Viewpoint Gallery, Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth
1997
Deluge (solo), Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff