Limited Edition – Stephen Hobbs, ‘Dazzle Cloud’

Stephen Hobbs was born in Johannesburg in 1972. Since 1994, Johannesburg has served as a critical reference point for Hobbs artistic and curatorial insights into the apartheid-city-turned-African-city, with a particular interest in the impact of defensive urban planning and architecture on the behavioral aspects of city and society. Hobbs functions not only as a practicing studio artist and dedicated printmaker, but also as a public arts curator and advocate. Hobbs printmaking practice is informed by the complex, often obfuscating, visual language and urban defensive planning used to construct cities. He works predominantly in etching, linocut and monotype, and his prints serve as a distillation of his practice – public and studio-based.

Dazzle camouflage has been a key trope in Hobbs practice for many years – a zebra-like pattern used on gunships in the early 1900s to fragment the visual field of enemy sites in combat situations. Although dazzle patterning became obsolete after World War I, Hobbs has mined the potential that such visual deception presents for aesthetic reflection on dystopian urban environments. During Hobbs recent stay in the Republic of Ireland 2019-2021, he began to activate a new making trajectory influenced by a three-year-long research project resulting in his Permanent Culture exhibition in Cape Town and Johannesburg in 2015. Consequently Hobbs has embarked on a new body of work and thinking informed by living in rural Ireland.

Stephen Hobbs, ‘Dazzle Cloud’, 2015, hardground etching, 32x27cm, Edition of 15.

WARNING. Keep out of direct sunlight. Handle with extreme care as works on paper are easily creased, bent or torn. Store in a dry, climate controlled facility.

This work is couriered rolled in a protective tube or flat on a protective backing board. Frame with non-acidic archival materials.