Alexis Hunter

About Alexis Hunter

Born in New Zealand, Alexis Hunter came to Britain in 1972. During the early 1980s she turned from conceptual and textual works to expressive painterly compositions.

Approach to Fear XI - Effeminacy Productive Action [1977]
6 photographs with green paint, each 32 x 37.5 cms
Donated by the artist 1991

Effeminacy Productive Action is part of a sequence which deals with issues of women and violence. It shows a male hand engaged in so-called women's work: cleaning. The masculine connotations of the object being cleaned - a powerful bike - perhaps render the image more socially acceptable. There is also a companion piece, owned by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, which depicts an elegant woman’s hand gradually becoming more androgynous as it cleans a car engine. The green arrow is a graphic symbol for movement.

Fear of the Intellectual Wife [1987]
Oil on canvas, 59 x 72 cms
Donated by the artist 1991

This is one of the artist’s later ‘trigger’ or automatic paintings. These are worked on spontaneously, with ideas emerging as she paints.

Alexis Hunter held an exhibition of her works at New Hall in 2000.