The man who made art out of who we are
I walked into that show and I was completely blown away . . . he just made things out of who we are and where he was. An extraordinary artist.
Hamish Keith
Christchurch-born artist Bill Hammond, noted for the environmental and socially aware themes of his work, has died aged 73.
He was considered one of New Zealand’s most influential contemporary painters.
Olivia McLeavey, whose family gallery in Wellington represented Hammond since 1987, confirmed the death to RNZ News.
McLeavey, who was told of the death by Hammond’s widow, said he died on Saturday evening.
Arts writer and curator Hamish Keith was among the first to pay tribute to the Lyttelton-based artist, describing him as “a marvellous artist and a very lovely man”.
He told The Panel Hammond’s death was not only a great loss for his family but also an enormous loss for the art scene in this country.
He said one of the artist’s bestknown works was Waiting for Buller. It was poignant because Walter Buller was the country’s first ornithologist, who published A History of New Zealand Birds in 1873.
“But Bill’s painting is about birds waiting to be discovered — hanging about to get named. If you just run that through the nature of us and art and finding ourselves and what we’re really about — that was a brilliant summing up of the uniqueness of being here and not anywhere else.”
It was not well known that Hammond was also a jugband percussionist, and for a time he was also a toymaker, Keith said.
He can remember the first time he saw some of Hammond’s work at an exhibition at the Brooke Gifford Gallery in Christchurch in the 1980s.
“I walked into that show and I was completely blown away . . . he just made things out of who we are and where he was.”
Keith said artists like Hammond were “always ahead of the curve” and his work had “a compelling magic”.
Hammond had brilliant command of technique and was a “painter’s painter”.
“You can’t fault his work in technical ways. It was never crude, rude — it was always up to the mark.”