ANDREW HEWISH: Huperballó I ὑπερβάλλω

Note: Prices include VAT on the margin scheme

ANDREW HEWISH

Huperballó | ὑπερβάλλω

Huperballó, a Greek term meaning "to be thrown beyond," encapsulates the idea of surpassing what is known, expected, or thought possible. It represents abundance, freedom, and the transformative power of art. Art answers the question, "Why art?" by helping us transcend Heidegger's concept of Geworfenheit (thrownness)—our condition of being cast into the world, shaped by arbitrary circumstances and the conditioning of our lives. Through the dynamic processes of activity and motion, art enables us to break free from these constraints, offering a profound understanding and an expanded sense of possibility.

These questions are central in the art of Andrew Hewish, where the condition of art making is between the experience of the world and the experience of art. In Hewish's hands, Aristotle’s kinisi - movement - transforms the stuff of the world as it cannons through the stuff of the studio. 

During a residency in 2024 at Meraki House on Tinos, Greece Hewish was struck by the constant motion of the elements, of the ocean, weather and the light, and the forceful presence of Greek myth, history and thought. Tinos is part of the Cyclades islands which circle the sacred island of Delos, birthplace of Apollo. In Hewish’s art, simple materials are transformed into sculptures that go beyond, in a simple gesture, what we have or know. The paintings swim in a collision of visuality, sensuality and motion. What are we left with? Huperballó.

A collection of  collaborative collages are also on exhibition as part of Hewish’s show Huperballó at Vivienne Roberts Projects - as a celebration of and tribute to the late Daphne Warburg Astor. These collages were made entirely collaboratively by Astor and Hewish in 2013 during a residency the pair were awarded in Trelex, not far from Geneva. What comes through in these works is a rapport and humour they shared. The two artists had been close friends since 2006, when Astor walked into the Centre for Recent Drawing in London, a charity founded by Hewish.  She asked to take part and soon became  a Resident Artist, major supporter and Board member. She was generous, tough, spirited, and great fun.

ABOUT DAPHNE WARBURG ASTOR

Astor was a poet, artist, photographer, farmer, publisher, spouse and mother, and came from a family of philanthropists. As her obituary in the Times said (July 24 2024), she “may have borne the names of two of the wealthiest families in American history, but she wore the pedigree lightly”.

On the death of her grandfather Felix Warburg, her grandmother Frieda Schiff Warburg made over the family home on Fifth Avenue on the park in New York to house today’s Jewish Museum. Her other grandmother was raised fending off bandits in what was then the Territory of New Mexico. Her father, Eddie, co-founded the American Ballet and the School of American Ballet, and donated many works to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her half brother Stephen and his wife, Audrey Bruce Currier co-founded the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership, with the assistance of Martin Luther King, which resulted in the March on Washington and the Civil rights Act of 1964. In 1979 she married Micky Astor; engineer, fund manager, regenerative farmer and grandson of Britain’s first female MP, Nancy Astor. Daphne had a deep respect for the environment and the arts, organising the  American Board of Fauna and Flora International, co-founding the Cambridgeshire Gardens Trust, fundraising at Kettle’s Yard, helping establish the Cambridge Literary Festival and Poetry in Aldeburgh, and latterly starting her much loved Hazel Press, which supports recent work in Poetry.  She brought creativity and joy to her endeavours and always helped others to fulfil their potential.  Perhaps this show reflects some of those qualities.

ABOUT ANDREW HEWISH BEM

Dr. Andrew Hewish's artistic journey, marked by accolades and achievements, includes the founding of the Centre for Recent Drawing in 2004. His works, collected globally, grace prestigious institutions like the Victoria and Albert Museum and The Warburg Institute.

Hewish’s practice includes drawings, painting, collage, films, and sculpture. In an enigmatic yet tactile body of work, there exists always the trace of the studio, the artist’s notation, and hand - visible as relic against paper, paint, and object. We see the wood armature of sculpture, a trace of plaster, the hand of the painter, the spontaneous moment of collage. Line and colour are mapped out in a dance of rhythmic restraint, pigment, and form. 

The concept of drift is central to the artist’s practice, in the idea that objects and materials emerge through a spontaneous process, a revelation of networking between the works in his studio whether sculpture or two-dimensional making. Material remains at the centre of the creative process, “part of an element of unknowability of what the material is going to do which lends itself to accident or traveling beyond the determined end-product.” Intertwined is a sense of archaism and lyricism, inviting the viewer to experience each object as contemplation, its materiality coolly sumptuous.

Note: Prices include VAT on the margin scheme.