B.

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)