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Matt Hopper

@matt_hopper_art

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Lost I make my sketches of places I have been in the hope that when I reach the end they'll believe the things I've seen. Art, music, ritual.

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Felt so good in HARI on my own. The ambient sound from outside and the sun through the windows. You could feel the weight of the art and all the spirit people had poured into it. And the history of the place. From my first time in the place I've always touched the 33 and made a selfie. 33 always jumps out at me. In masonic terms it's the highest degree of Scottish Rite initiation and there's other weird stuff. I'm looking a little emaciated. Everything is just passing through me.... by @matt_hopper_art

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5 days ago

these fragments I have shored against my ruins : acrylic on canvas : 40 x 30”

Opening this weekend (Saturday 1st) at the marvellous @tregonycontemporary in St Mawes, Cornwall, one of my fave paintings will be on show alongside career celebrated artist @richardvfcook . Quite the honour to be in his company along side all other wonderful Tregony artists. (Link in bio)

I’ll miss being at the preview, but hopefully someone else can drink, smile, talk encouragingly about the work of others and about how it’s nice to paddle in St Mawes harbour and eat a crab sandwich.

Thanks @judigreenart and @briangreen_tregonygallery for curation and support.

Second image is the work fellow Hull artist @matt_hopper_art, from his show at the weekend. It seemed apt. by @matt_hopper_art

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3 months ago

by @matt_hopper_art

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3 months ago

The Space Between – Pop-up Exhibition & Discussions

We are delighted to be able to offer Fine Art MA / MFA students from York St John University and Hull College Arts Institute the opportunity to experiment and network in HARI.

Bringing existing works to creatively install, and making new pieces that respond to the space, this is an opportunity to interact with an unconventional gallery and production venue and to deepen their knowledge of how their work communicates beyond the white cube.

Come and see this vibrant group of emerging artists’ pop-up exhibition – brought together collaboratively during Saturday – and discuss their experiences of developing meaningful practices, and of working together in this way, at this juncture:

“The space between is not empty. It is where curiosity, uncertainty, and possibility meet. It is where ideas take their first breath, where conversations spark new directions, and where collaboration transforms individual practice into something shared.”

Opening event Saturday 25th July, 4-9pm
Open Sunday 26th July, 11am-3pm, with informal Artist Talks throughout

Some refreshments will be available, but you are also welcome to bring your own.

#thespacebetween #collaboration #crossinstitutelearning #sharingspace #artsexperimentation #researchinplay #artsnetworking #re_taketakeover #artsresearch #artstudentsupport by @matt_hopper_art

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3 months ago

Join us this weekend for The Space Between, a pop-up exhibition bringing together MA Fine Art students from Hull College and MFA students from York St John University.

The exhibition explores the space between ideas and making, experimentation and understanding, capturing a moment of creative exchange and artistic growth.

Come and spend some time with the work, the conversations it inspires, and the possibilities that emerge from the space between.

#TheSpaceBetween #ContemporaryArt #ArtExhibition #CreativeCollaboration #Hull taken in Hull, United Kingdom by @matt_hopper_art

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3 months ago

by @matt_hopper_art

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3 months ago

For this weekend only the fine art MA students from York St John University and Hull School of Art and Design are taking over the Hari gallery on Francis Street here in Hull. We'll be showing our work together in this awesome post-industrial space. Come along and hang out with us and see where we're at.

On my Facebook memories it was on this deity, 2010, that the council dumped some big rocks in a circle at the centre of our council estate here in Hull. There's a long story behind it but basically this event became an important landmark in my own personal mythology. As a geek who's really into neolithic and bronze age ritual sites it felt like the universe was speaking to me through the local municipal authorities.

I'll try and dig out my concrete sculpture that I made after this event and bring it along this weekend. It should look great in the gallery. Hope to see you this weekend. We'd really like it if you came! by @matt_hopper_art

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3 months ago

Breathing new life into redundant 1960s street furniture with vague and subjective messaging.
Hashtag, uh, i can't think of any by @matt_hopper_art

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3 months ago

Semi Detached. Pen drawing. I enjoy living here but then I've never known anything else. Directly to the left of this drawing is the Commonwealth Homes Community Centre. I'm going to show my work there soon, right in the heart of the estate. It's part of a sheltered housing complex and is the ideal home for my work. My partner Sonya almost moved in there a couple of years before she died, so it's going to be an experience. I found architect's drawings for the estate in the History Centre. They look great with all the annotations and measurements. It was funny to see them as I'm so familiar with the houses, having drawn and painted them so many times. My drawing process feels like a ritual, an attempt to connect with the spirit of the place. These architectural drawings are so damn functional. There's no consideration of light, shadows or esthetics. They're great physical illustrations of how everything we see in our artificial environments began as a concept, an idea in someone's head. We pull them from Plato's realm of ideal forms and manifest them here in these crude structures. The artist-occultist Alan Moore created the concept of Ideaspace. According to him it is a realm where all our hopes, fears and dreams exist. The job of the artist is to explore other people's ideaspaces and synthesise them with our own, creating new realms of infinite possibilities. Dig it. by @matt_hopper_art

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3 months ago

Me striking a cute pose in the spring of 1974. Crazy to think this was taken before Star Wars existed and even before the Sex Pistols had formed! The early 70s seem so distant. Just warm, hazy flashes of random stuff. This was at Grandad's. In 2010 me and Sonya went for a drive and I realised we were near to where he used to live. He'd just died and the house was up for sale so I parked up and we both went and sat on that wall. It was a fantastic day. Warm and peaceful. I think about the past all the time. The future just scares me and the present feels empty and dead. But I still have a burning drive to create. I'm incredibly lucky to have this. The emptiness is actually a gift. It's a blank canvas of infinite potential. Everything else is just an endurance test. Also: the size of 70s 7 Up cans 😅 by @matt_hopper_art

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Having a major clearout at home and found my sedotionaries straitjacket bondage top thing that I bought when me and my girlfriend hitched down to London in the 80s! There's actually a photo of me drawing in it drawing in the 80s with my black mohawk. It's insane that I still fit into it. It's also a miracle that my stomach is as flat as it was back then. It feels really weird wearing it again. Really weird. Where have the years gone? I may wear it next time i go to Spiders. If I ever do...😅 I'm actually also wearing it in the photo of me in Spiders.... by @matt_hopper_art

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I decided this year that I'm gonna make SEVEN of these big drawings of SEVEN different signposts around Dent Road where I 'live' on the Bricknell council estate. Seven Sermons to the Dead. All very gnostic. All very Jungian. I had hoped to leave this in situ over the summer and come in and work on it at the Hull School of Art and Decline. But we have been instructed to vacate the studio by the 10th. So I have moved it to my home. Next year our course will be located on the mezzanine. Totally different vibe. So I'm drawing this old signpost and I've been looking at the fields surrounding the council estate. Up until the late 18th century they were large open common fields which the commoners of Cottingham were free to cultivate. After this they were enclosed and transferred into private hands. Over the signpost I'm drawing an arch from the crumbling gothic folly at Risby, just a few miles from the Bricknell estate. This folly was built in the 1770s but abandoned a few years later when Risby Manor burned down. This was the same time as the common fields that would one day become the Bricknell council estate were being enclosed. Most of the council houses are now in private hands. It's funny the way this land has moved from public to private ownership through the centuries. The foxes and the hedgehogs and the frogs remain indifferent to our little ownership games. Sometimes I envy them by @matt_hopper_art

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