Roland Hicks: The Fourth Wall

7 Oct 2023-3 Mar 2024

The Fourth Wall, Hastings Contemporary, 2023. Credit: Pete Jones

Overview

Combining aspects of drawing, painting, still-life, collage and performance with sculpture, artist Roland Hicks will transform two galleries at Hastings Contemporary this autumn.

Working directly on sea-facing walls, Hicks will create the illusion of a flimsy patchwork of found materials, as if someone with rudimentary carpentry skills had hastily assembled a barrier out of whatever came to hand, inviting visitors to interpret the result as they see it themselves. Is it merely an act of folly? Perhaps an inadequate response to rising sea levels, or a paranoid reinforcement against supposed invaders? 

Hicks has also made three new totemic sculptural artworks which appear to be made out of discarded planks from the distinctive fishermen’s net stores on Hastings’ Stade, beside the gallery. 

The Fourth Wall is the outcome of the £10,000 biennial Evelyn Williams Drawing Award made in association with the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2021 exhibition. The exhibition is delivered in a collaboration with the Evelyn Williams Trust, Drawing Projects UK, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, and Hastings Contemporary.

Roland Hicks (b.1967) was born in Aldershot, Hants and studied at Winchester School of Art (1987-90), followed by the prestigious Slade School of Art (distinction) between 1994 and 1996. During a career spanning more than twenty years, his work has featured in numerous exhibitions in the UK, Denmark, Netherlands and Germany with his most recent solo show, Backstreet Geometry, in New York just last year (2022). 

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