The Residence Gallery is pleased to present Robert Hawkins Ceramic Versions (of his best-loved pieces). Hawkins has recreated some of his most popular paintings in an almost accidental new series of ceramic sculptures and bas-reliefs. Sudden access to a kiln and loads of white clay led to a quick explosion of creativity and an amusing collection of pieces that echo and sometimes mirror the narratives displayed in the witty classics of his earlier years. All of the usual suspects are present; the caveman, the witch, the ghost, the cave, the volcano and the snakes. The same skilled hand is at play, instantly recognizable as the work of Hawkins, except this time in 3D.

Ceramic Versions is the final feature in a programme of solo exhibitions curated by Ingrid Z in celebration of The Residence Gallery’s 10th year anniversary.

Robert Hawkins was born and raised in Sunnyvale, California. He was a very good artist as a child. Encouraged by getting a drawing published in the kid's section of the San Francisco Chronicle at the age of 5, he went on to win the Best Artist Award in both his freshman AND senior years at Homestead High School.

He moved to New York by 1978, and was a genuine East Village artist, building up notoriety at the legendary Patrick Fox Gallery, and attracting such admirers as Cookie Mueller, who wrote in Details Magazine in 1983, "It's sensational, a banquet, a veritable luau of fantasies." and Gary Indiana in Village Voice noted "Like a lecture on Phenomenology that continually slides into fetishism and morbidity while the lecturer maintains a wide psychotic grin. The sinister, explicit content of Hawkins's work is hilariously out of whack with the contemporary mainstream, a refusal of artistic good behaviour." Apparently too much so, for by 1995 Christopher Chambers observed, "Why Hawkins is not more well known is one of the anomalies of the art world. Perhaps because of the quirky nature of his work, or the fact that they were certainly not mass produced, requiring distinct ideas for each individual piece, his professionalism was in question."

Looking back, dealer Patrick Fox observed, "He was always too smart for the room." And now Glenn O'Brien can say that "Robert is a god compared to daubers like Julian 'The Hulk' Schnabel or David 'Picabia light' Salle." So while Hawkins may have eluded a mainstream adulation that engulfed many of his contemporaries, the rewards for him are the appreciation of a loyal core of individuals of the same exotic intellectual calibre as his. Call him a well-kept secret.