Chloe Hawkins

Statement

Hawkins' works attempt to unpick and examine the fragile and temporary nature of the condition of life.

She is interested in the connection between nature and culture and attempts to create evocative pieces which will both entrance and haunt. She is also interested in the romantic attachment that human beings have with the natural world, juxtaposed against the reality of the relationship between them.

Many of her pieces create a strange relationship between seduction and repulsion, through a combination of mainly taxidermy and lens-based media. Contrary to traditional taxidermy, Hawkins makes no pretence that her animals are alive, but chooses to embrace their death instead, and to help her subjects shake off any unpleasant association; to allow themselves to be seen as if for the first time.

Hawkins also draws upon her experience of life, her adoration of nature and passion for the arts to reconfigure not only how we think of life, but how we think of death. 

Both life and death are ephemeral and fleeting. Hawkins attempts to re-present the notion of life and death in a completely different way; not only to declare death as a celebration of life, but to demonstrate the beauty in these so-called macabre objects and images.