For information and to order visit hewsonclad.com

This exhibition was a partnership between The Ashburton Art Gallery and The Physics Room, Christchurch. In March, collection items from the Ashburton Art Gallery collection were exhibited alongside work created by Eve Armstrong, John Vea, and Mike Hewson in (Un)conditional I at The Physics Room in Christchurch. Now, in August, Armstrong, Vea, and Hewson have made new work responding to the (Un)conditional series of exhibitions, which explores the concepts of hosting, being a guest, trade, exchange, reciprocity, utu, and manaakitanga, as well as Ashburton as a particular site.

Hewson has been developing his line of hand-painted tiles — the eponymous Hewsonclad — since the beginning of 2018. Designed to be distributed at a price point available to the everyday consumer rather than a small group of art collecting elite, (Un)conditional IV showcases a phenomenal 2140 paintings in three Ashburton palettes — bush, tussock, and alpine — borrowed from a trio of A.A Deans paintings. Endlessly modular, the exhibition provides an opportunity for audiences to imagine Hewsonclad in their homes via a variety of hanging arrangements. It is hoped that eventually Hewsonclad will find a distributor amongst New Zealand’s larger hardware and designware chains to fully circumvent the gallery system.

Exhibition runs: 6 – 31 August, 2018

For more information see:
https://ashburtonartgallery.org.nz/exhibition/unconditional/

In the development stage of the exhibition over 1100 Hewsonclad tiles were commissioned by the Holiday Inn Melbourne on Flinders to be installed in 53 of their executive rooms and suites and in the hallways. The architect for the hotel requested a specific colour palettes that matched the recently renovated rooms. See example images above.