ADVENT CALENDAR 2020 | Phill Hopkins
Last year we ran a subscription only advent calendar by e-mail with artist Phill Hopkins, a regular and valued contributor to the proceedings here at BasementArtsProject. This year we are running the Subscription only calendar again only this time in a webpage format. Over the coming weeks until Christmas Eve we shall be adding an image a day to this page. We hope you enjoy this thoughtful selection of photographic images and texts provided by Phill Hopkins. You can view more of his work at https://www.phill-hopkins.co.uk
Bruce Davies Artist / Writer & Curator of BasementArtsProject
Introduction: Phill Hopkins | A Year in Photographs 2020
I’ve come to think that my taking of photographs is much like my process and reasons for making drawings. It concerns the capturing (and all those other words and phrases describing a hunting process, akin to the “taking-down” of a wild beast!) of an idea, sometimes for its own sake and sometimes as a note for another activity (but I don’t always know that when looking through the viewfinder).
During this pandemic I’ve taken more photographs than ever before. But when I look at the images from this year there is a sameness in them. On one hand, this is not surprising as our activities have been limited due to being locked down, but on the other, it relates to my overall working practise.
My friend, the artist and writer Derek Horton, wrote a piece in response to my paint chart drawing in 2014 ('Walnut Shadow Hoar Frost Satin Heart Retreat Gloss Room Room - The Drawings of Phill Hopkins’) and this has been very much on my mind since the virus gifted us time to reflect. In it Derek writes,
“His drawings have a devotional quality. Drawing on the humble, mundane materials and images that dominate our everyday experience (and I deliberately use the expression "drawing on" in both its literal and metaphorical sense), they worry away at them, pull them back and forth, reflect on them repeatedly, compulsively, until their physicality and their meaning is transformed. Like rosary beads worn down by a lifetime of prayer, or a totem constantly made and remade, through the very act of repetition their quotidian ordinariness is transcended”.
This piece relates to a series of drawings made some six years ago (those who know my work know that six years is a long time for me) but I think it is true to say that it relates to my photographs as much as it does to the whole of my art making. Taking photographs of the same thing or similar is perhaps akin to an archaeological digging away, a repeated scraping-away to isolate an image in order to focus on it, to discover what it is. Derek suggests that my work has a "devotional" aspect and I think this is very true. I often make series and my photographs are part of this working pattern. I am mindful of my body when looking through the viewfinder, how my feet are placed, my posture, my grip on the camera; when I reflect I see this as a kind of physical or body prayer, a meditative contemplative activity.
All of the photographs included in Advent 2020 by Phill Hopkins are available to buy. Contact via Hopkins’ website.
1st December 2020
Asda, Holt Park, Leeds UK. 08:18, 17 January 2020
In last years daily Advent post I finished on the 24 December with a photograph of Asda, near to where I live. This year I felt it was proper to begin at Asda. Early in January a large white enclosure was erected in the carpark to house materials and plant, as Asda was to have a refit. In the greyness of January these huge white rectangles where a strange sight against the dullness of the backdrop.
2nd December 2020
Tinshill, Leeds UK. 08.37, 22 January 2020
In the late 1980’s I made the sculpture ‘I Had to Wait for the Window to Open’; it was a three story block of flats, like the building in this photograph, made from welded steel with a tiny detail of an open window. When I was a boy both my parents worked. If I was ever ill on a school day my grandmother would look after me. She lived across the road and I could see her bedroom window from my bedroom window. When she got up, she would open the little window in her bedroom. This was the signal for me to go over to her flat.
3rd December 2020
Holt Park, Leeds UK. 08.28, 12 February 2020
I often walk along this dog-leg in a path close to where I live. The hedges and fences are high on each side and because of this it’s quite a threatening route. I came across this child’s play tent, a rather deflated arena for a circus.
4th December 2020
Bethnal Green, London UK. 10.05, 17 February 2020.
I don’t often show my photographs that include family members, they usually stay within private albums. I like this image, it brings a smile. In a side street two middle aged women have replaced members of an East End posse.
5th December 2020
Holt Park, Leeds UK. 15.05, 20 March 2020
I’ve always liked the work of René Magritte (although, sometimes I feel my liking is unfashionable) and I like the song ‘Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War’ by Paul Simon. Whenever I see coniferous trees I think of Magritte. There are a lot of these trees where I live; some are looked after and others have gone a bit wild. For me this photograph is very complicated, packed with lines and angles and textures and colours and light and shadow and noise and echo; I find it rather difficult to read it. On one hand it’s a dull cul-de-sac (from the French for “bottom of the sack”) yet on the other there is perhaps a strange foreboding.
6th December 2020
Cookridge, Leeds UK. 15.28, 23 March 2020
This photograph was taken on the first day of lockdown. It is part of the ongoing series ‘Walking Ahead’, that depicts a solitary figure. Often when walking with others I will fall behind or run ahead to capture moments. There might be two things at play here. There is the character of the walker, that we see up ahead. We might imagine what thought they might have or perhaps where their journey might be taking them. Then, there is the character of the photographer, or the viewer, watching from a distance, or maybe, keeping a distance. There might be a sense of lag, or that of being let behind, or simple solitude. Whilst looking at these images I often have Franz Schubert’s Winterreise (Winter Journey) playing in my head (it’s never far from my thoughts anyway), a song cycle for voice and piano that he wrote in 1828.
7th December 2020
Adel, Leeds UK. 14:46, 21 April 2020
There are new housing developments going up everywhere. It brings out the unfortunate and sour NIMBY in me. This path leads to the church of Adel St John the Baptist, described by Pevsner as one of the best and most complete Norman churches in Yorkshire. Either side of the path, behind the temporary fencing, there are the familiar markers of blue-topped wooden stakes driven into the ground marking-out the footings for new homes. The fencing makes a deep score across the ancient field and later on in lockdown the path was made wider to accommodate social distancing purposes.
8th December 2020
Holt Park, Leeds Uk. 14:26, 27 April 2020
This fence is at the bottom of my street. When I was a boy I lived on a 1950’s council estate. During the Thatcher era council houses were sold off. I remember noticing some new owners covering the front of there bog-standard houses with stone-effect cladding and wondering if they then thought they were living in a bygone time. I started to understand the difference between objective and subjective thinking. I like the fences in this photograph, their functionality and mismatched nature. I like that the owner of the house has planted inside the fence so as not to see it, as if it weren’t there. I like that I know the fence is there, a kind of secret.
9th December 2020
Holt Park, Leeds UK. 7:52, 1 May 2020
Sometimes when I walk past this house there are children bouncing up and down on the trampoline. One day they shouted at me, “Why are you taking photos?”. During early lockdown there was a feeling that we were pulling-together for the common good, there were signs of this everywhere. The weather was good and everything was going to be ok, until, someone tested his eyesight and it all fell apart. I enjoyed and was nourished by the drawings of children that I came across on pavements and walls. I discovered that the sales of “jumbo” chalk-sticks had increased and we were thankful to others.
10th December 2020
Armley, Leeds UK. 9:12, 30 May 2002
I still see the remnants of the pandemic on our streets; rubber gloves and masks; they are even in the deep countryside. There are also the strange and often primitive attempts to mark out space. This isn’t a particularly fine photograph. I took it whilst queueing to go into a shop. There’s a pathos about this very ordinary piece of gaffer tape attempting to hold on to the ground in order to measure out a safe distance. There’s a monumental quality to it akin to the folding of a beermat to put under the leg of a wobbly table.
11th December 2020
Adel, Leeds UK. 13:53, 6 June 2020
I was brought up on large housing estate in South Bristol: the city to one side and the green of Somerset to the other. It was idyllic, but far from The Famous Five’s countryside. As it was then, it is still the same now, I have favourite fields. Since March I have been taking photographs of this particular field, near Golden Acre Park. I watched the crop of grain from early sprouting to final harvest and recently seeing steaming piles of manure being ploughed in. The shadow cast by the ivy covered tree to the left has caught my eye, its shadow dark against the lush green. I like the bigness of this field, I like the way it makes me feel very small.
12th December 2020
Adel, Leeds UK. 13:01, 23 June 2020
I’m a collector of collections, I like to group things together. I’ve got a photograph collection of “logs” and running alongside it, I’ve got a growing series of drawings too.
13th December 2020
Holt Park, Leeds UK. 7:46, 3 July 2020
I like this garden near to where I live. I pass it and look at it a lot. I like the way the gardener works. There are some formal arrangements going on, tall at the back, etc, but I rather enjoy the “outsider” quality of it. In the early morning the colours were stunning against the near black of the hedges.
14th December 2020
Holt Park, Leeds UK. 8:52, 30 July 2020
I wonder if this rotary washing line has been in place since the housing estate was built in the 1970’s. I very occasionally see an item of washing on it.
15th December 2020
Wenhaston, Suffolk UK. 8:10, 2 August 2020
I’ve been visiting the small Suffolk village of Wenhaston for a long time now. It’s a delightful retreat. I make lots of work when I’m there, inspired always by Britten’s legacy and the sound of the beach at Dunwich. I took this photographs early one morning. I loved the dark lushness of the corn and thought about Kevin Costner in a Field of Dreams.
16th December 2020
Benacre Beach, Suffolk UK. 14:54, 11 August 2020
I like Benacre. I like the connections and leftovers of World War II. As a boy I would have loved to play ‘war’ there. This photograph is of the edge of a pill-box, which seemed to have sunken deeper into the beach. I think pebbles from the beach would have been used in the concrete mix
17th December 2020
Holt Park, Leeds UK. 7:56, 4 September 2020
The name “Phillip” comes from the Greek for the “lover of horses”. When I pass a horse or see one in a field I instinctively make that clicking sound with my tongue. I’ve always done this, even as a child. I rode horses as a boy, a bit wild-west and far from scarlet tunics. I begged my parents to buy me a foal for £15. I fantasise about having my own a horse, even with a cart. I love giving horses a rigorous rub and then enjoying the oily smell left on my hand. There was a notice in a nearby field asking if any horse owners wanted to graze their animals for free. As a result this little pony and his pony friend appeared. Although I have tried my tongue clicking on them, they haven’t responded to my call, they just stare at me.
18th December 2020
Adel, Leeds UK. 11:11, 20 September 2020.
Like many, during the first lockdown I did a lot of sorting. One job that I’d been meaning to do was sorting my CD’s, so I did it. Although it was very difficult to make a “charity shop” pile, I found it very liberating. Too much stuff. My collection of Bob Dylan is my most precious and I found I had some doubles. The album ‘Hard Rain’ is very important to me, not to mention over 50 others! I remember watching an episode of ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ in 1976, which showed the whole of the ‘Hard Rain’ concert. As a teenager I remember making drawings of the album cover. It now hangs between an image of Benjamin Britten and Bjork. As an eleven year old I played a lion in Britten’s ‘Noye's Fludde’, although I didn’t know that at the time. When I read out loud, there is a kind of stumbling with the words in my mouth: I’m dyslexic. I really connect with Bjork’s singing, her use of unusual stumbling and mouthing of English words and phrases. These three portraits hang under Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan and Philip Guston; they all watch me as I work at the high table in my studio.
19th December 2020
Golden Acre Park, Leeds UK. 8:39, 1 October 2020
I’ve come across many tree stumps with leaves upon them. I like to see them as a kind of altar with the offering of fallen leaves. I like the way the leaves have been accidentally placed by the wind and gravity. There is an elegance in the choreography of the placing. They are like poems of their own making. The rings of the stump act like the groves of a vinyl record and the leaves as the stylus. There is stillness and music, both at and in the same time.
20th December 2020
Otley Chevin Forest, Leeds UK. 15:27, 20 October 2020
At the start of lockdown, with the help of a bursary, I bought a new camera. I wanted something that would fit into my hand, was simple and quick; my good friend Tim helped me in the selection. I love it. It has been in my hand for the past nine months. It is marked with the paint from my studio. In a police lineup I would easily identify it as mine.
21st December 2020
Holt Park, Leeds UK. 9.52, 6 November 2020
During lockdown I used this path a lot and so did many others. At times it was parched-hard earth, at others it was deep soggy mud. Various kind gifts were placed in the mud to aid walkers; wooden planks, large branches and even rubble. After placing a wooden pallet someone put up a handwritten sign saying, “Holt Park Bridge”. I liked coming across the different offerings. When encountering the mud did someone immediately think, “I have three unused hanging baskets at home…”, or did the solution come after rummaging through a garden shed?
22nd December 2020
Cookridge, Leeds UK. 9:58, 6 November 2020
I have watched a line of fifteen trees throughout lockdown. I’ve enjoyed joining them as they came into bud and right through until they dropped their leaves. When I was a child I watched a television programme called ‘The Singing Ringing Tree’. It was wonderful but very scary (and I still don’t like scary!). In my adult years I managed to find a DVD of it and after some research discovered that it was a Brothers Grimm story, made in communist East Germany as a tool to educate children against capitalism.
23rd December 2020
Bramhope, Leeds UK. 13:19, 13 December 2020
I’ve noticed lots of browns during autumn and early winter. Rich burnt Sienna type colours punctuating the green greys. These colours have crept into my drawings. I saw this wood pile from a far, its luminosity caught my eye. There is a sadness about an enormous tree that has been taken down and its trunk and limbs severed . There is great beauty and mystery in the revelation of its innards.
24th December 2020
Near Paul’s Pond, Cookridge, Leeds UK. 9:11, 15 December 2020
I finish this year’s Advent Project with a big picture. I don’t make many photographs that are “landscape” in format, I don’t particularly like the shape. However, I do encourage myself to hold the camera differently, especially when I’m in a big space. I’ve been making the ‘Shadow Self’ Series for a while now (I’m a follower of the Franciscan Richard Rohr). They are photographs of my shadow cast in front of me. I like making them. Since the result of election in the UK last December and the resulting national darkness, I haven’t made so many. Like the reaction I had to the result of the EU Referendum and the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the election result a year ago brought me again to my knees.
Those who know my work have watched me make overtly political images; they helped me process the world that I live in. But making them was emotionally costly; I spent a lot of time watching, listening and reading news stories, collecting images that engaged me. At the end of 2016 I thought that to continue to make this kind of work was just too difficult for me and so I tried to pull myself away. I had the same thoughts again at the end of last year. I decided that I needed to guard myself and to limit the amount of news I exposed myself too as it often infuriated me. Recently my fast was nearly broken when I saw images of Rudy Giuliani with sweat, blackened by hair dye, dripping down the sides of his face and it chimed with the drips in my work.
At the end of last year and more so this year (lockdown has helped) I’ve tried to return to myself, which brings me back to today’s photograph. I love the vastness of it, although I’m just standing on a footpath in a farmer’s field. I see hope as I stand at the feet of my own shadow and offer this from Rumi “Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen” Ah’mein.
Phill Hopkins is known for the multifaceted nature of his practice, which encompasses drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture and installation. Working in a wide range of media, from the traditional to the unconventional, Hopkins has created a body of work that, while remarkably diverse, is firmly rooted within a complex and coherent artistic strategy. He was born in Bristol in 1961 and has been an artist based in Leeds since graduating from Goldsmiths College, London in 1985. He exhibits both nationally and internationally, with recent shows with the group Prosaic in Slaithwaite, and online with Leeds Summer Group Show and ‘Houseboundart' with Chapel Arts Studio .His work resides in various public and private collections including The Imperial War Museum, London, Nanjing Baijia Lake International Culture Investment Group, China, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Leeds Art Gallery, Doncaster Museums & Art Gallery, Stadt Dortmund, Germany, The Hungarian Museum of Photography, Kecskemet, Hungary.
Website: www.phill-hopkins.co.uk
Instagram: phill_hopkins
Artist Biography
Phill Hopkins was born in Bristol in 1961 and has been an artist based in Leeds since graduating from Goldsmiths College, London in 1985. His practise is very cross-disciplinary and includes the use of drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture and installation.
He exhibits both nationally and internationally, with recent shows at BasementArtsProject, Leeds; Pangolin Gallery, London; 3rd on 3rd Gallery, New York USA; Galerie Youn, Canada and Cross Gallery, Australia. His work resides in various public and private collections including The Imperial War Museum, London, Nanjing Baijia Lake International Culture Investment Group, China, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Leeds Art Gallery, Doncaster Museums & Art Gallery, Stadt Dortmund, Germany, The Hungarian Museum of Photography, Kecskemet, Hungary.
WEBSITE: www.phill-hopkins.co.uk
CONTACT:
TWITTER @phill_hopkins
Studio Journal Entry | In Conversation at LeftBank Leeds
BasementArtsProjects . . .
Stockholm Independent Art Fair Supermarket | February 2012
INHOSPITABLE | Liverpool Biennial | October 2012
INHOSPITABLE 1.1 | Leeds | November 2012
COLONIZE | Jamestown, New York | April 2014
Daily | September 2015
Sluice | October 2017
Hypogeal | November 2017
A House Within A Home | YSI2019 / Index Festival | May-September 2019
Collaborations On The Corner (A collaboration with Jadene Imbusch) | May-September 2019