Tim Hawkinson

Tim Hawkinson is a Los Angeles-based artist who creates highly imaginative two and three-dimensional objects across a range of media. His works vary in scale, from the small to the very large, to the gigantic.

For this major solo exhibition, the artist’s first in Australia, Hawkinson presents sculptures, photo-collages and drawings from the mid 1990s to 2007. Earlier works include a balloon self-portrait, comprising a suspended latex cast of the artist’s body that was inflated via a wall-mounted reservoir of air, like a gigantic bladder or lung. Another work, Drip, comprises a monstrous form with white twisted-plastic tentacles that released droplets of water into steel buckets ringed about its base. The rhythmic staccato of the ‘drip-drip-drip’ suggested a drumming machine.

Hawkinson has experimented with various techniques to usher his works into being. Without formal training in electronics or engineering, he has taught himself to build intricate mechanical systems that produce movement and sound. Objects rotate and spin, drone and chatter, suggesting a form of intelligence that is often directed by wires and tubing attached to a machine nearby.

For more information, please visit MCA's (opens in a new window) website.