Karis Hopkinson’s Presence was part of a group projection show at Sheffield’s Exchange Place Studios in 2019, and marked an import stage in her practice

“This piece was an opportunity for a piece of work to really embody the scale and impact that I had always envisioned when creating work. I see my work as a visual gateway to an evolving archive of inquisition that is a reflection on my experience of the contemporary landscape. Occupying a space in the city skyline places the work directly within this context and effectively fuses all of the prodigious, disparate ideas and influences of it’s making together. Presence is a simple and impactful visual that speaks to this and effectively elevates the core principles of my work. Realising it has massively influenced subsequent projects, and it has been a catalyst in my understanding of what my practice might become”.

Hopkinson’s work draws from landscape, space, place, the history and romanticism of landscape painting, the graphic language of advertising and the city, the tension between text and image, the sensuality of word as image and the overlap between written and visual language. From the disparate reference points she simplifies and combines, a visual mash-up of information, some clear, some obscure. The kitschy residue of romantic landscape paintings folds into the language of advertising and modernity; as if the Sunday supplement is collapsing in on itself. Text forms, colour planes and ambiguous shapes overlap both each other and the landscape behind, at once harmonious with the natural space and constantly interrupting it.

“This disconnect, this visual jolt, creates a gap of understanding that I have come to consider as integral to the success of the image. Can it be inert and in flux?”

Hopkinson’s work is an inquiry into the gap of understanding, what is seen and not seen and what is suggested.

Hopkinson is a visual artist based in Sheffield. She studied painting at NCAD, Dublin in 2017. She works primarily in digital drawing whilst also exploring video, installation and sculpture.