Bill Hammond was born in Christchurch in 1947 and passed away in January 2021. He was a resident of Lyttelton and graduated from the University of Canterbury’s School of Fine Arts.
After ten years as a toymaker, he started painting in the early 1980s. He derived most of his images during the 1980s from popular culture, in particular punk music and comic imagery. The subject matter of these early paintings often featured rock singers and fitness fanatics.
After a trip to the Auckland Islands, where there are no humans and birdlife is prolific, he read a book entitled Buller’s Birds of New Zealand. Reflecting on this, he said, “I saw a New Zealand before there were men, women, dogs, and possums. When you see it without people, you know that the soulful, beautiful thing about New Zealand is the land.” These experiences heavily influenced his later and most well-known artworks which often feature clothed, half-human, half-bird creatures in an imagined world where birds still rule the roost.
Hammond is now regarded as one of New Zealand’s most important artists, and Bill Hammond prints and paintings are celebrated for their surreal and poignant commentary on nature and humanity.
