B.

This work was displayed with this label to mark the artist's death in 2021:

All of us at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū were very saddened to hear of the death of Bill Hammond in late January, and our thoughts are with Bill’s family and friends. Bill’s contribution to the art of Aotearoa New Zealand was original and unforgettable, and he occupied a special, beloved place within the arts communities of Ōtautahi Christchurch and Whakaraupō Lyttelton.

Bill was raised in Christchurch and attended the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in the late 1960s. In 1989, he joined a number of other New Zealand artists on an expedition to the sub-Antarctic and the Auckland Islands. This trip had a profound effect on the artist; it was from this point that his highly regarded bird paintings emerged in his practice.

Bill’s paintings are favourites for many of our visitors – works they return to over and over again. His wry sense of humour and generosity of spirit (once you got past that famous reserve) will be missed by many here at the Gallery. Recently, we had been working closely with Bill on a new publication focussed on his paintings from the past 15 years, which includes numerous tributes by artists to Bill and his work. Bill had that rare quality in an artist – someone who is highly regarded by his peers, and whose works appeal to people from all walks of life. We were honoured to have the opportunity to work with him this one last time.

Bill will be missed. We mark his passing with the deepest of respect.

Many locals fondly remember this painting hanging on the wall of the Lava Bar in the port town of Lyttelton throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The Lava Bar was one of Bill’s favourite haunts – he very occasionally played there in a band with no name. He swapped this painting to cover costs for a bar tab, and it quickly became part of the fabric of the place. Sadly, the Lava Bar was damaged in the earthquakes of 2010/11 and demolished shortly afterwards. Defiantly lowbrow in the Christchurch gothic tradition, Volcano Flag incorporates tattoo designs, a dancing skeleton playing a guitar, a mountain blowing smoke rings and a bird with a human skull for a head. It’s a painting that references the history of the local landscape: Whakaraupō (Lyttelton harbour), where the artist has lived and worked since the early 1970s, is the caldera of an ancient extinct volcano. Bill Hammond: Playing the Drums (3 August 2019 – 19 January 2020)

“It’s bird land. You feel like a time-traveller, as if you have just stumbled upon it – primeval forests, rātās like Walt Disney would make. It’s a beautiful place, but it’s also full of ghosts, shipwrecks, death…” —Bill Hammond Bill Hammond sailed to the remote Auckland Islands, south of Aotearoa New Zealand towards Antarctica, in 1989. Its landscape made a profound impression on him. Lined up on cliffs, staring out at the ocean, the birds of the Auckland Islands were unafraid of people, and Hammond imagined that Aotearoa looked very similar before human habitation. Different stories and timeframes and images collide in his canvasses as if in a dream, or as if fragments of consciousness were projected on to a screen. “I don’t have a tight brief”, he says. “I fumble around history, picking up bits and pieces.”

(Te Wheke, 2020)