Robert Hitchcock
Encyclopedia
Robert Charles Hitchcock (born 18 August 1944) is an Australian sculptor. He commenced his career in 1970 and works in a wide variety of subjects and materials. Hitchcock is one of the leading portrait sculptors currently working in Australia today. He is known for his life size (and super life size) bronze
sculptures which are located in private collections as well as public works of art
in Australia
and overseas.
, Western Australia
. He is of Irish and indigenous Australian descent. In his youth he worked as a carpenter and entered formal study in his early twenties at the Art Department of the Perth Tech College. Whilst he initially wanting to study fine painting in fine art, due to impaired vision (from an accident as a child) he had difficulty in seeing and mixing colours and realised that he had more of an affinity with three dimensional art. The early sculptures of Hitchcock were exploratory in nature and diverse in technique and style. Subject matter tends towards realism
and expressionism
of the "continuity of movement in space" and the subjects themselves include natural forms, and realistic modelling of animals and figures in movement. Hitchcock later moved away from this early realism
(which he sought to create in his sculptures) to a "more stylized and abstract
search of forms and planes". After graduating in 1969 he worked in plaster factories (learning plaster piece moulding techniques), fibreglass factories and various bronze
foundries.
came in 1970 of the champion race horse 'Aquanita' which competed in the Melbourne Cup
in the early 1960s, and was a quarter life size. As Hitchcock's reputation grew he received a number of similar commissions from the equestrian industries including racing, pacing, polo
and quarter horse racing. These early works led in later life to life to Hitchcock receiving commissions for over life size equestrian commissions in Norseman, Merredin and Moora, Western Australia
as public works of art
.
In the 1970s, Hitchcock began to receive increasingly significant recognition for his work. These include a series of sculptures of the Russian Ballet Dancer Rudolf Nureyev
. Throughout his career he has created sculptures of prominent and (in his own words) 'interesting people'. These include Leonard Cohen
, Rod McKuen
, Professor Ian Constable, Beethoven, Robbie Burns (for the Robbie Burns Society) and many prominent Australian public and sporting figures.
Towards the end of the 1970s Hitchcock bronzes took on a larger scale, which was particularly suited for public art commissions - the most significant of which is, almost certainly, his sculpture of Yagan
. From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue
of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979
sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after then Premier of Western Australia
Sir Charles Court
was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling
, WA's first governor." Despite this setback, the Noongar community persisted, establishing a Yagan Committee and running a number of fund-raising drives. Eventually, sufficient funds were collected to commission Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze
, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on Heirisson Island
in the Swan River near Perth.
In 1997, within a week of the return of Yagan's head to Perth, vandals beheaded the statue and stole the head. After restoration, it was beheaded again. Credit for the act was anonymously claimed by a "British loyalist" as an act of retaliation for Colbung's comments about Princess Diana. The Western Australia Police
did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
Commentary on the beheadings varied widely. One column in The West Australia found humour in them, referring to the head as a "bonce" and a "noggin", and finished with a pun on "skullduggery". Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns"; and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief. There is no sense of the decapitation as being an act of vandalism, even less that it could have been motivated by malevolence.... [T]he piece has a definite authorising function...." On the other hand, academic analysis has treated the act with much more gravity. In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own."
In 2002 Member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly Janet Woollard
called for the statue's private parts
to be covered up, but nothing was done. In November 2005 Richard Wilkes again called for the statue's private parts to be covered, on the grounds that such a depiction would be more historically accurate as Yagan would have worn a covering for most of the year. Also under consideration is the creation of a new statue with a head shape that accords better with the forensic reconstruction of Yagan's head.
Hitchcock moved into his larger studio (which he currently works from) in 2000 and continues to be highly sought after and collectable. A recent high profile commission was for the' SAS
Garden of Reflection' in Perth. This consists of three over life size SAS figures in various uniforms from 1957 (the inception of the SAS in Australia) with the remaining two in modern combat uniform and weapons. These commissions are highly accurate in detail and give a true representation of the Australia SAS soldier.
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
sculptures which are located in private collections as well as public works of art
Public art
The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...
in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and overseas.
Early life
Hitchcock was born in PerthPerth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
, Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
. He is of Irish and indigenous Australian descent. In his youth he worked as a carpenter and entered formal study in his early twenties at the Art Department of the Perth Tech College. Whilst he initially wanting to study fine painting in fine art, due to impaired vision (from an accident as a child) he had difficulty in seeing and mixing colours and realised that he had more of an affinity with three dimensional art. The early sculptures of Hitchcock were exploratory in nature and diverse in technique and style. Subject matter tends towards realism
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
and expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
of the "continuity of movement in space" and the subjects themselves include natural forms, and realistic modelling of animals and figures in movement. Hitchcock later moved away from this early realism
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
(which he sought to create in his sculptures) to a "more stylized and abstract
Abstraction
Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....
search of forms and planes". After graduating in 1969 he worked in plaster factories (learning plaster piece moulding techniques), fibreglass factories and various bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
foundries.
Professional career
His first commissionContract
A contract is an agreement entered into by two parties or more with the intention of creating a legal obligation, which may have elements in writing. Contracts can be made orally. The remedy for breach of contract can be "damages" or compensation of money. In equity, the remedy can be specific...
came in 1970 of the champion race horse 'Aquanita' which competed in the Melbourne Cup
Melbourne Cup
The Melbourne Cup is Australia's major Thoroughbred horse race. Marketed as "the race that stops a nation", it is a 3,200 metre race for three-year-olds and over. It is the richest "two-mile" handicap in the world, and one of the richest turf races...
in the early 1960s, and was a quarter life size. As Hitchcock's reputation grew he received a number of similar commissions from the equestrian industries including racing, pacing, polo
Polo
Polo is a team sport played on horseback in which the objective is to score goals against an opposing team. Sometimes called, "The Sport of Kings", it was highly popularized by the British. Players score by driving a small white plastic or wooden ball into the opposing team's goal using a...
and quarter horse racing. These early works led in later life to life to Hitchcock receiving commissions for over life size equestrian commissions in Norseman, Merredin and Moora, Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
as public works of art
Public art
The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...
.
In the 1970s, Hitchcock began to receive increasingly significant recognition for his work. These include a series of sculptures of the Russian Ballet Dancer Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev was a Russian dancer, considered one of the most celebrated ballet dancers of the 20th century. Nureyev's artistic skills explored expressive areas of the dance, providing a new role to the male ballet dancer who once served only as support to the women.In 1961 he...
. Throughout his career he has created sculptures of prominent and (in his own words) 'interesting people'. These include Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
, Rod McKuen
Rod McKuen
Rod McKuen is an American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks, and classical music...
, Professor Ian Constable, Beethoven, Robbie Burns (for the Robbie Burns Society) and many prominent Australian public and sporting figures.
Towards the end of the 1970s Hitchcock bronzes took on a larger scale, which was particularly suited for public art commissions - the most significant of which is, almost certainly, his sculpture of Yagan
Yagan
Yagan was an Australian Aboriginal warrior from the Noongar tribe who played a key part in early indigenous Australian resistance to British settlement and rule in the area of Perth, Western Australia. After he led a series of burglaries and robberies across the countryside, in which white...
. From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue
Statue
A statue is a sculpture in the round representing a person or persons, an animal, an idea or an event, normally full-length, as opposed to a bust, and at least close to life-size, or larger...
of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979
WAY 1979
WAY '79, also referred to as WAY 79 and WAY 1979, was the official 1979 sesquicentennial celebration of the colonisation of Western Australia by Europeans.-Planning:...
sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after then Premier of Western Australia
Premier of Western Australia
The Premier of Western Australia is the head of the executive government in the Australian State of Western Australia. The Premier has similar functions in Western Australia to those performed by the Prime Minister of Australia at the national level, subject to the different Constitutions...
Sir Charles Court
Charles Court
Sir Charles Walter Michael Court, was a Western Australian politician, 21st Premier of Western Australia and member for the seat of Nedlands for the Liberal Party for nearly 30 years.-Early life:...
was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling
James Stirling (Australian governor)
Admiral Sir James Stirling RN was a British naval officer and colonial administrator. His enthusiasm and persistence persuaded the British Government to establish the Swan River Colony and he became the first Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Western Australia...
, WA's first governor." Despite this setback, the Noongar community persisted, establishing a Yagan Committee and running a number of fund-raising drives. Eventually, sufficient funds were collected to commission Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on Heirisson Island
Heirisson Island
Heirisson Island is an island in the Swan River in Western Australia at the eastern end of Perth Water . The city of Perth and the Town of Victoria Park are linked by The Causeway which is actually two bridges which span the two foreshores and the island...
in the Swan River near Perth.
Western Australia Police
The Western Australia Police services an area of 2.5 million square kilometres, the world's largest non-federated area of jurisdiction. In 2008, its 7,526 employees included 5,647 police officers.-History:-Early history:...
did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
Commentary on the beheadings varied widely. One column in The West Australia found humour in them, referring to the head as a "bonce" and a "noggin", and finished with a pun on "skullduggery". Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns"; and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief. There is no sense of the decapitation as being an act of vandalism, even less that it could have been motivated by malevolence.... [T]he piece has a definite authorising function...." On the other hand, academic analysis has treated the act with much more gravity. In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own."
In 2002 Member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly Janet Woollard
Janet Woollard
Janet May Woollard is the sitting member for the seat of Alfred Cove in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly.She stood for the seat in the February 2001 State election as an Independent candidate , and defeated the incumbent and frontbencher Doug Shave who as Fair Trading Minister, was...
called for the statue's private parts
Intimate part
An intimate, personal, or private part is a place on the human body which is customarily kept covered by clothing in public venues and conventional settings, as a matter of decency, decorum, and respectfulness...
to be covered up, but nothing was done. In November 2005 Richard Wilkes again called for the statue's private parts to be covered, on the grounds that such a depiction would be more historically accurate as Yagan would have worn a covering for most of the year. Also under consideration is the creation of a new statue with a head shape that accords better with the forensic reconstruction of Yagan's head.
Hitchcock moved into his larger studio (which he currently works from) in 2000 and continues to be highly sought after and collectable. A recent high profile commission was for the' SAS
Australian Special Air Service Regiment
The Special Air Service Regiment, officially abbreviated SASR but commonly known as the SAS, is a special forces unit of the Australian Army...
Garden of Reflection' in Perth. This consists of three over life size SAS figures in various uniforms from 1957 (the inception of the SAS in Australia) with the remaining two in modern combat uniform and weapons. These commissions are highly accurate in detail and give a true representation of the Australia SAS soldier.