symbolism

                 Rozanne Hawskley 

               

Pale Armistice, 1991,  Photograph by Dewi Tannatt Lloyd, Rozanne Hawksley 

Pale Armistice, represents a moving and highly effective transmutation of the green and red wreath of official ceremonial, translating it into something altogether more modest and more tender: substituting the pale shadesos real men's and women's gloves for the regimented fierce colours and shiny surfaces of evergreen folage and faulse poppies. The reality and informality of the gloves in Rozanne Hawskley's sculpture  their tints and textured softens, allows the to serve a perfect analogues for real human hands, emphasis human variety, human corporeality and human touch, in a never ending cycle of comfort. 

Rozanne's  longstanding interest in gloves can be traced back to the hands of her seam stress grandmother, who used then as a over for pin-picked fingers. she recalls being fascinated when taken along to Handley's in Southsea, where her mother purchased gloves, and equally in awe of the contents of the leather shop in London. Therefore this is a symbolic memory in Rozanne's life and she has explored many different ways of working with these symbolism's. 

"Pale Armistice is a triumph of a subversive surrealism, simultaneously bearing delight and gravity; and it is too, a feminist meditation on memorization  not only of those killed in war, but of its damaged and bereaved survivors".

Dr Ruth Richardson 

"This state of war seems un-ending and only in death are we united in an enviable peace".

 Rozanne Hawksley

This compelling installation was inspired by the life experiences of Rozannes grandmother, Alice Hunter, an outworker for one of the naval tailors in Portsmouth, and also the seamstress to whom the title refers. Modified and expanded with each showing, the installation typifies the slow gestation of much of Rozannes work. 

It recounts a sailors life through her piecework on hundreds of collars, and subtly draws on realities of naval life at that time, such as the suture patterns a surgeon would have used to close wounds. The results chart the passage of time and the arc of a sailors life, from the making of his collar to his shroud, and final resting place deep in the ocean. Assembled before the onlooker they form a quiet altar, a contemporary relic, a contemplative shrine to the perils of life at sea, and a celebration of the invisible seamstresses and the sailors who were buried anonymously at sea in the garments they made.  http://www.rozannehawksley.com/page13.htm 

Rozanne Hawksley Wide Sargasso Sea, 1979, the flowers on the wreath were made from melted candle wax and the edging was embroided on an Irish machine. the veil was then distressed.

Wide Sargasso Sea was a book written by Jean Rhys, this book is about Bertha Mason who was the mentally ill women in the attic, of the Novel Jayne Eyre, (Charlotte Bronte, publication date-16th October 1847) . Jean Rhys wrote that this women was born in Jamaica and at this time black people were classed as the lowest of the low in society and should marry a different class or color. She was put in the attic to save her from a metal institution, by Mr Rochester. This book discovers the racial abuse, discrimination and cultural difference Bertha Mason suffered.

Rozanne Hawskley's work relates to work because of the use of symbols and the way that Hawskly uses symbolic garments to convey meaning. In my work I have used Garments which are symbolic to me for each memory I am trying to convey. Within each memory I am trying to convey different emotions, and feelings.