Home – Where the Rabbits Roam

From what might seem an innocent beginning – a set of self-portraits in the guise of a rabbit – Stephen Hobson has created a suite of works that through an expanding symbolic field seek to explore a complex network of ideas, and uncertain feelings. Unlike a magician, who might surprise us by pulling a rabbit from a hat, the artist's transformation is not simply the clever execution of some carefully rehearsed sleight of hand. The magic here is not the sudden unexpected emergence of the rabbit, but the imaginary folding together of a few simple elements that allow the artist to become the rabbit in the hat.

But for us as viewers, the question is not 'how does he do that?', but 'what might it mean?' Of course, we could follow the hand, the trace of gestures, concentrate on technique, but this will only tell us part of the story. To find out what is really going on we need to focus on the detail. The hat, for example. This isn't a magician's top hat, or a song and dance man's straw boater, or even some non- descript gardening hat, instead it is very specifically identified as an Akubra - that quintessential Australian bushman's felt hat. To be even more specific, the felt of this hat is made of rabbit fur. It is here, in these little details, that meanings begin to hop about, multiply in a most promiscuous manner.

As the process of making these drawings and paintings continues, the rabbit and the hat begin something of a symbolic transformation. The hat is not just a symbol of the man on the land, it becomes the landscape. Meanings collapse into each other. These two bare hills of earth suggest something else - breasts. And in the midst of this interpretative fecundity we find ourselves in a space that has been opened up for an engagement between ideas of masculinity and femininity, of fertility, sacrifice and faith. As we follow the artist, we might find ourselves ferreting through dark and unfamiliar territory, but we know that the artist has been there before, has already dug deeper than we are likely to go.

In the process of making these self-portraits the artist has taken the dangerous step of exposing the inner processes required to reimagine the self. Sometimes this opens up an unsettling space, awkward ideas and images, perhaps some that we might usually think of as slightly embarrassing. There is uncertainty, but also a willingness to go below the surface and allow what emerges. This is work that demonstrates an inner faith in the value of making art, of doing the artist's job properly, whatever the implications might be.

But what are we doing in all our mining for meaning? Do we leave no stone unturned in the hope that we will find some rare nugget or precious stone, some singular thing, something that is easy to see and to quantify? Are we looking for someone to reveal how the trick is done? Perhaps such simplistic explanations are impossible. That sense of self, of home, the uncertain edges of hope and faith - those things that Stephen Hobson might be searching for - perhaps these things are not so simple, have no easy answer. Instead what is important is all that digging and tunnelling, turning over the soil, and then stepping back to see what comes up.

Peter Anderson. Keep It Under Your Hat. (Catalogue essay. Stephen Hobson: Down Under exhibition. Soapbox Gallery, Brisbane. © Peter Anderson, 2005).

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