John Hopwood I Personages

About

This will be the first exhibition of John Hopwood's work since his 2008 show held at the New Millennium Gallery, St Ives and the first ever showing of the artist's work at Belgrave St Ives. The exhibition is the culmination of work produced in the intervening period and the first posthumous showing since Hopwood's unexpected death earlier this year.

The work shifted significantly during the 1990s towards abstraction and was further effected by the change in light and colour following the artist’s move from London to St Ives, Cornwall in 1999. The paintings continued to convey a sense of atmosphere and contemplation but were now composed of smaller units of colour, geometric abstracts often arranged in a grid formation. However, the source of the paintings was, as always, rooted in the artist’s experience of the world around him, a world he regarded with intense fascination.

The evolution of this particular exhibition took place over a period of more than a year of discussion and planning so it is salient to quote from one of a series of notes the artist made shortly before his untimely death:

“The present work is the result of my idea of presenting a room/gallery of personages. (The group could be seen as artistically ‘autobiographical’ – all the figures having a specific meaning in direct relation to myself”