At Brighton, he began a long-term collaboration with Tony Steyger, who has written, 'My ongoing work with Steve Hawley challenges me to experiment with ideas and form.
'Using only the lightest hint of irony, Hawley reads the text over the original illustrations....Peter helps daddy to wash the car while Jane is making tea with mummy in the kitchen.
'At the time, the Paintbox could generate a tracer effect that resembled the decaying repeat patterns in Duchamp's’ painting Nude Descending a Staircase No.2.
Hawley devised a method whereby he could key into an ornate gilt frame a series of classic still-life subjects – flowers, bananas, leeks and, most absurdly, a trout....These instant Futurist paintings not only exposed the workings of video effects within a modernist framework, but also mocked the march of art historical progress...Hawley seemed to be agreeing with the classic philistine position that ‘even a child could do that’...At the same time, his work reintroduced a narrative – that of the artist in the act of making images – while continually emphasising the constructed nature of what he was creating.
According to Catherine Elwes, 'Language Lessons provides a delightful insight into the more eccentric pastimes of the average Englishman as well as the realisation that all languages are constructed and, as one learned interviewee averred, speaking English now ‘ties you to a world-view of dominant American culture’.
The novel, published in English as Passing Time, was based on Butor's experiences as a teacher in Manchester, and his struggles to adapt to the cold, the rain, the fog, the terrible food and other aspects of the British way of life.
On his website, Hawley described the piece as 'a meditation on the nature of narrative itself, as mediated through technology, but also a series of speculations on the real and the fictional Manchester, as seen through the pessimistic eye of an outsider, a foreigner 50 years ago.
'[9] Hawley continued his investigation of his city with his IPhone app, Manchester Time Machine 2012, made with the North West Film Archive.
Hawley used computer post production to transform the performer, captured using the suit, into a knight in armour, who recites the final chapter of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange.
In War Memorial, 'the messages themselves recede to the background and the directorial decisions of the largely unknown army filmmakers accumulate to show a different view to the reassuring and brave faces of the men (and a few women), emphasizing instead doubt and uncertainty'.