Hipkiss, Chris
Education: apprentice model-maker at his father’s joinery and pattern-making company
Profession/occupation: apprentice model-maker at his father’s joinery and pattern-making company.
Art form/medium: drawing.
Start artwork: from 1990.
Relevant info: he uses the poetical power of political styled text and grand geographical theories as tools to make a landscape.
(Solo-) exhibitions: Backyard Genius, Verbeke Foundation, Kemzeke 2009.
References: Bree, Henny van; Chris Hipkiss; de vrouw brengt redding, in: Out of Art, jg 3 nr 4, 2008.
Outsider Art Sourcebook, 2009, p.88.
Despite showing academic promise and gaining good basic qualifications, he left school at age 16 to become an apprentice model-maker at his father’s joinery and pattern-making company. He quits his unsatisfying job and from 1990 he is a dedicated player at drawing.
Hipkiss’ work deals with a personal, mythical realm, but based on things actually experienced. He does have ‘a little obsession with geopolitics’.
I like the poetical power of political styled text and grand geographical theories, but [in the end] … they’re just tools to make a beautiful landscape.’ Hipkiss says ‘femininity taking over’ is an important theme. He believes a past dominated by patriarchal development and destruction has resulted in the depletion of the earth’s resources, placing the best hope for the future in the hands of humanity’s feminine side and blurring the traditional power of the traditional gender roles.
Chris Hipkiss1964 Uxbridge, England -
