Swan boats and heart shaped tunnels, girl scouts, and hair-brushing in floral wallpapered rooms are all subjects in Zoe Hawks’ new solo exhibition Broken Hearts at RHODES this October. Bringing together five paintings which focus on the complex experiences of girlhood, Zoe Hawk’s seemingly playful oil paintings each take a sinister turn.
Upon first encounter, Hawk’s vibrant images speak to a sense of nostalgia for the simple beauties of girlhood. The iconic girl scout uniform, the matching school-girl outfits, the mischief of friendship are all features which enhance this sense of 1950s and 60s nostalgia for a childhood before the digital age. However, upon closer inspection each piece takes a dark turn.
In Mourners, the piece depicts four girls in matching white shirts, pleated blue skirts, knee-high socks and Mary Jane shoes crowding around a pile of twigs, rocks and candy-coloured flowers. Their outfits speak to an innocence associated with female adolescence as the two central girls clutch bright pink and yellow blooms. Whilst each girl’s face appears pensive and reserved or obstructed entirely, the girl who sits on the right holds a small white tissue to her face, wiping the tears from her flushed cheeks. What initially appears to be an innocent image of four girls in a forest enjoying the wonders of nature takes a darker turn as a wing emerges from beneath the pile of twigs, revealing, as the title suggests, that the girls are mourning the loss of their raven. The whimsical, hand-picked flowers now become funerary flowers, and the contribution of twigs forms a devotional cremation or burial for their winged friend.
A similar tone is established for Set Alight, where three girl scouts kneel around a pile of kindling, holding a tiny flame to it in the hopes of creating a fire. Clad with badges of their accomplishments, the girls appear focussed and eager to succeed. However, the tiny flame seems meagre compared to the much larger black sticks, and the girls, barelegged, tend to this task in a desolate snowy wilderness. Questions arise as to why these young girls are in the snowy clearing on their own, and whether their little flame, perhaps a token of hope, will ever mange to light this damp bonfire stack.
Windswept follows a similar theme where two girls appear in a rocky landscape alone, dressed in brightly coloured winter coats and hats. One girl stands, hands-in-pockets, glancing to the side in a tentative manner, whilst the other searches the floor on her hands and knees. A bush with sprawling branches appears behind them leafless as a raven is seen flying overhead. This ominous theme is a vital motif in Hawk’s work, and one which keeps the viewer searching for more.
The vulnerability of an adolescent girlhood is captured in Looking Glass, where this piece focusses on anxieties around appearance. The blonde girl, dressed in blue appears brushing her hair in a small handheld mirror, a small nod to the tale of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Whilst the image is much lighter in subject than some of Hawk’s other works, Looking Glass speaks to the vulnerabilities in self-consciousness which frame a young girls’ teenage years.
Similarly, Tunnel of Love, takes a fairytale-style image and hints to an eerie theme as the dark tunnel she is about the enter offers little comfort to image filled with innocence and hope.
Hawk’s works take the form of a cautionary tale about the confronting uncertainties which come with female adolescence. The stories captured in vignette-style invite the viewer to reflect on the fragile and transformative moments where innocence gives way to experience, and identity is shaped equally by uncertainty as it is hope.
