Opening: Wednesday 17th June, 6 - 8pm
Seventh Gallery - 155 Gertrude St, Fitzroy, Vic.
Exhibition dates: 18th June - 4th July
Gallery hours: Tues - Sat, 12 - 6 pm
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L-R: Eileen & Maude, Dear Aimee (Miss Constance Worth), Clementine |
Persona
Obscura: Disrupted Portraits
(Catalogue essay
by Laura Skerlj)
Savina Hopkins
currently works from a studio in a decommissioned hospital wing in Melbourne.
The site is quiet, with circle-shaped gardens of roses, lavender and balmy
herbs for meditation and mourning. Eggshell blue corridors house congregations
of discarded patient-recliners; medical fixtures still protrude from the walls.
This unusual studio seems the perfect space for Hopkins to have realised her
current body of work: a series of delicately wrought collages, where the faces
of antique postcard portraits are removed using a medical scalpel before being
replaced with flanks of skin-coloured Band-Aid.
Two years ago, Hopkins began
using this process to make portraits of her family members. The first in her
Band-Aid series was a study of the artist’s father who was unwell in hospital
at the time—the intense focus required to make his image encouraged her to
reflect deeply upon their connection, what it meant to be human (and therefore,
damaged), and the transpiring discomfort sometimes felt living in one’s own
skin. This and other studies in the series, presented a unique, and sometimes
fraught, connection with the “sitter”: by using the faces of those she knew so
well, the nuances of their intimate relationships became implicit in the matrix
of her process—looking, considering, cutting, masking, suffocating, healing.
In
contrast, the people featured in Hopkins’ current exhibition, Persona
Obscura, are unknown to
the artist. Her primary material—silver gelatin postcard portraits that date
back to 1910-1930—were sourced online, gifted to the artist by friends and
colleagues, or scrounged for at second-hand markets. On the verso of some
portraits are brief letters that contain meagre, if any, autobiographical
clues. Although this new distance between artist and subject might seem
limiting, on the contrary, it opens up the formal potentials and conflicting
attributes present within Hopkins’ Band-Aid works. While there is something
destructive about cutting skin, particularly a face, from an image, Hopkins’
practical sensitivity, in which every subject is precisely tended, reflects her
desire to recreate them as best she can using this unromantic and faux-somatic
material.
Aesthetically, Hopkins’ work has a particular vintage. Like the walls
in her hospice studio, old-world hues butt against the tiny plastic panels that
now compose the subjects’ faces. Moody details within the original
photographs—frosting, jewels, couture and flowers—have been carefully included
through delicate cutting, or highlighted using paint. Damaged surface areas of
the photograph have also been retouched. Their scale is considerably smaller
than the previous family portraits, the Band-Aid panels applied with meticulous
care. Even in their presentation, other papers and fabrics from this era,
collaged around the photographs, expand their nostalgic quality. Having
completed postgraduate studies in scientific illustration, as well as
maintaining parallel jobs in museums, archives and library environments, there
is an undoubtable “collector’s instinct” present across Hopkins’ oeuvre.
However, there seems less of a desire to present artefacts than to use
sophisticated learnt techniques to psychologise old images via new processes.
Just
as Victorian post-mortem death portraits were orchestrated to present the
deceased as still living, Hopkins’ work conjures a similar psychological
disruption. As the artist explains, there is a definite disquiet associated
with suffocation, loss and injury that occurs when the flesh-like material is
applied all over the subject’s face: “Using Band-Aids allows me to explore a
complex psychological terrain, as there is a particular emotional charge in
this unconventional material that I find thoroughly engaging.” As trauma, by
nature, requires continual repression to exist, this insistence upon covering,
or exchanging, the truth-telling face with something face-like is in keeping: the bandaged images
become traumatic, almost literally, as the word “trauma” is identified in Greek
as a psychic “injury”.
From this, there is a poetic disjuncture within the
works’ formal considerations that recalls French literary theorist Roland
Barthes’ distinction between a photograph’s “studium” and “punctum”. In his
iconic, Camera Lucida
(1980), Barthes articulated the former as that which occurs in the image: the
photographer’s intentions, the general gist of the picture. These attributes
are the elements—faces; gestures; settings—that compose the work. The latter
“punctum” is less agreeable. It is defined as an aspect within a photograph
that disturbs: “[a] sting, speck, cut, little hole… a cast of the dice… an
accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).” Although
the disruption within Hopkins’ work is not oblique, there remains a slippery
shift between the outer photographic scene and the refined yet plastic inner
collage that conjures this allusive, and recalcitrant, quality.
Darkness aside,
there is also humour in a portrait made using a material that mends playground
wounds and minor kitchen casualties.
When expecting a face yet finding a chimera, the viewer is jostled
between their expectations and reality. This method of working suffused much
Surrealist and Dadaist collage of the 20th century, as artists
displaced the ordinary to create abnormal visions. However, in this
contemporary work, the angular sections of Band-Aid take on a pixel-like
quality against the original image’s hazy romance. A parallax to the present
infinitude of “selfies”, sitters in Hopkins’ original source-images patiently
held their position for a single portrait. As one avatar replaces another,
Hopkins’ masked subjects chuckle at our enduring vanity.
In turn, this
sympathetic process—in which antique portraits have been collected,
contemplated, and quite literally de-faced—is sentimental, traumatic and
humorous. The void once occupied by the sitter’s most essential feature is
rearticulated using various carefully selected Band-Aids. The result is an
abstraction of character that is as unsettling as it is well-formed; just as a
painter might apply a specific tone, glaze or brush stroke to fully-realise the
essential features of their sitter, Hopkins’ sensitivity toward her
materials—both Band-Aid and photograph—reveals a perplexing transition between
the real and the uncanny.
Laura
Skerlj is a Melbourne-based artist and writer. www.lauraskerlj.com
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Opening night at Seventh Gallery |
APRIL 2015
This year I've been busy in the hospital studio, working with my band-aid postcards portraits. Here's a sneak preview of the kind of work I'll be exhibiting in Melbourne in mid June....
Raffaellina (detail) - S Hopkins, 2015
DEC 2014
My new series of band-aid portraits got a plug on The Art Life, New Work Friday. Jolly good!
NOV 2014

My photographs of cemetery votive boxes, seen through their scratched perspex doors, published in the Melbourne journal Materiality #4: Surface.
OCT 2014
Recent work from my hospital room studio at St Vincent's, made from band-aids & photographic studio
portrait postcards.
SEP 2014
Photographs (with some photoshop trickery) I took for Habitual Criminal, a play by Carolyn Bock, a Shift Theatre production, showing at La Mama in October.
Another poster design/spot of photoshopping for Melbourne band Baron von Choice, set to tackle "the difficult follow-up gig" at Bella Union this month.
AUG 2014
A commissioned illustration for an article on the intertwining identities of therapist and mother.
JULY 2014
Helena Cedran has written a feature on my band-aid portraits, published on the Artrend section of 20 Minutos, a leading Spanish newspaper. You can read it here - if you can read Spanish!
JUNE 2014
HOWL
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANIMAL RELATIONSHIPS IN OUR HUMAN LIVES
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Plastic Pig - Savina Hopkins (watercolour on paper)
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Kylie Blackley | Jill Bolitho | Gonzalo Ceballos | Charlie Chamma | Alana Di Giacomo | Shaun Duggan | Elizabeth Hickey | Savina Hopkins | Colleen Jones | Cheralyn Lim | Renuka Rajiv
Opening: Friday June 13th, 6 - 8 pm
Brunswick Arts Space, 2a Little Breese St, Brunswick, Vic.
Exhibition Dates: 14th - 29th June
Gallery hours: 2pm - 6pm Thurs & Fri, 12pm - 5pm Sat & Sun
MAY 2014
I designed this poster for Melbourne band Baron von Choice, who are performing at Bella Union next month.
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✂ This month marks the beginning of my year long art residency at St Vincent's Hospital. I'm rather enamoured with the studio space and very much looking forward to making new work here.
APR 2014
Pinknantucket Press have launched their latest issue of Materiality, this one with contributors responding to the theme 'Precious'. I have an article / series of photographs in it focusing on hard rubbish called 'Trash as Treasure'. Get yours here! Subjects covered in this edition include Japanese lacquer, love letters, the lost thylacine, illuminated manuscripts, saffron, luthiery, gems, rubbish and gold, plus cover art by Gracia & Louise.
Photograph - Savina Hopkins
FEB 2014
Brunswick Arts Space present 'Entry 2014', their 9th contemporary art prize / fundraiser. I have a piece in it, come along for the art and festivities.
Opening: Friday 7th Feb, 6 - 9 pm
Exhibition dates: 8th - 16th Feb
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📌I'm very happy to have been awarded an artist residency at St Vincent's Hospital - Caritas Christi Hospice, commencing in May this year
JAN 2014
I collaborated with Renuka Rajiv on 2 artworks for this group exhibition
I've got you under my skin
COLLABORATING WITH THE OTHER
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L: Androgynous Bosch (mixed media on paper) R: Pitted History (mixed media on paper)
Savina Hopkins & Renuka Rajiv, 2014 |
Opening: 16 Jan, 6.30pm
Exhibition Dates: 16th Jan - 2 Feb
Gallery hours: Thurs - Sunday, 10am - 5pm
DEC 2013
I have a work in the Belle Arti Prize, all details below.
5th Annual
Belle Arti Prize
35cm x 35cm, $5000 National Acquisitive Prize
Opening: Wednesday 11th December, 6 - 8 pm
Exhibition dates: 12 December - 25 January
Venue: Chapman & Bailey Gallery, 350 Johnstone St, Abbotsford, Vic
Gallery Hours: 10am - 5.30 pm Monday - Friday, 11am - 5pm Saturday
This year's judges are Juan Ford (Artist), Melissa Loughnan (Utopian Slumps) and Max Delany (NGV)
NOV 2013
Close Quarters
Inlet / Outlet (collage on paper)
Opening: Wednesday 13th November, 6 - 9 pm
Rubicon ARI - Level 1/309 Queensberry St, North Melbourne, Vic.
Exhibition dates:13th - 30th November
Gallery Hours: Wed - Sat, 12 - 6pm
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Arts Hub have published this review of Close Quarters by Marguerite Brown.
For years Hopkins’ practice has involved the
synthesis of multiple fragments, creating 2D assemblages greater than their
parts.
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Often
pillaging the musty, dusty domain of old stationery for inspiration, her latest
exhibition Close Quarters conjures both visual
poetry and meaningful suggestion from source material that would seem
incongruous to both – namely, antiquated office files. Through collaging
remnants from past paper bureaucracies, Hopkins has skillfully constructed
works that are anything but mundane with a lyrical yet understated aesthetic.
This
series relies on numerous perforated pieces of card and paper that were used as
file tabs in the early–mid 20th century.
These little fragments which in the frugal war years were often cut-up and
recycled from other documents, would sit on top of papers contained in old
Naval Department files, the entire file then punctured through with a metal pin
to hold it together. Rescuing the tabs from imminent disposal, Hopkins was
drawn to their interesting aesthetic qualities; their fragmentary words,
symbols, patterns and palette of often faded pastels that go beyond the
ubiquitous manila. This combined with their apparent incompleteness and
intriguing incoherency made them ideal fodder for collage construction.
With
forensic precision, Hopkins has sliced each individual tab to fit perfectly
into a broader schematic conception. Some collages in the exhibition contain an
almost topographical resonance, with swelling lines of meticulously shaped
rectangles that flow around or between sections of old maps, such as in Crosscurrent. The artist frequently
arranges the tabs into groupings of tone and colour to demarcate masses within
her compositions. Like patchwork fields viewed from the sky, or bodies of water
that negotiate protruding land masses, certain works such as Magnetic
Passage, Harbour and Unwatched
Channel seem
to deconstruct and reconstruct topographical conventions.
While
the tabs contain individual snippets of words in different typeface (or
sometimes hand written), along with various truncated shapes and emblems, they
share one common characteristic in the perforation that resides at their
centre. These small remnants have been injured in their former life, and each
carries its own ragged little wound. Yet with infinite care Hopkins has
re-invested value into worn shreds of paper that were destined for the bin. In
doing so she evokes both the intimate and the abstract, prompting deeper
inspection at close quarters.
Offsetting
the nostalgia for a bygone era that rises through the seams, a subtle
word/letter play contained in the works reveal Hopkins’ intellectual approach.
As she sets down a paper trail of fragmented human activity, the artist invents
a secret language – one that is ultimately left for the viewer to decode.
- Marguerite Brown
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Art Almanac has selected my show, Close Quarters, for the Feature Exhibitions section of their November issue, pg. 53 'Savina Hopkins salvages discarded objects and uses their broken histories as a springboard for exploration into the physical qualities of found objects and the ideas that are embedded in or extruded from them.In this new body of work, she has used old card and paper file tags discarded by government departments due to their non-archival status. The tags come from naval department files from the 1930s and 40s, when paper was considered precious and the tags themselves were recycled from society’s ephemera – maps, theatre ticket stubs, racing cards and cigarette packs. Through collecting and re-configuring, Hopkins once again recycles these objects in her work. As she gathers, arranges and assembles these elements in an artwork, the seemingly insignificant has its meaning re-valued and re-interpreted.'
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My band-aid family portraits find their spiritual home... on the cover of Psychotherapy in Australia journal. Out now!
Preparations are in full swing for my upcoming show, Close Quarters, at Rubicon ARI next month.
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work in progress...
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I made the leather paper weight pictured above, using recycled leather from the spine from an old book, lead shot and waxed cotton thread. Collage fragments are firmly adhered to the substrate!
SEP 2013
Photo credit - Alice Cannon
Pinknantucket Press are the publishers of Materiality, a journal about the material world. My artwork features on the cover of Materiality: Time (Issue 2).
AUG 2013
Slow Watch
Karen Gray and Savina Hopkins
Curated by Gina Kalabishis
Exhibition Opening: Tuesday 27 August, 6-8pm
Venue: Gallery Ranfurlie, Korowa Anglican Girls’ School, 10-16 Ranfurlie Crescent, Glen Iris
Viewing Dates: Wednesday 28 – Monday 2 September, 1- 4pm (excluding weekends)
Gallery Ranfurlie presents Slow Watch, the work of Melbourne artists Karen Gray and Savina Hopkins. Despite different approaches to art making, Gray and Hopkins both place symbolic value on the subject. Whether contemplating interpersonal relationships or keepsakes of personal significance, their work speaks of a preoccupation with the foundations of memory and the workings of the psyche.
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Fiddler Beetle (Eupoecila australasiae) watercolour on paper |
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Jewel Beetle (Castiarina media) watercolour on paper |
The Aikenhead Cente for Medical Discovery (ACMD) is holding it's inaugural Acquisitive Art Prize at St Vincent's Gallery. I have two scientific illustrations of beetles in this exhibition, painted from specimens studied under a microscope at Melbourne Museum. All details below.
Opening: Monday 19th August, 5pm - 7pm
St Vincent's Art Gallery, Ground floor, Daly Wing, 35 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy, Vic.
MC: Steve Ellen (RRR and 774)
Dates:1st - 28th August
Gallery hours: 9am - 5pm, Mon - Fri
JULY 2013
MAY 2013
I have ploughed my family archives to create a series of portraits using adhesive dressings (‘band-aids’) as a primary medium. The band-aids approximate flesh tones and are applied to describe the form and contours of the body. Via the symbolic and metaphorical connotations band-aids can evoke, I aim to charge each portrait with psychological weight, exploring and amplifying interpersonal dynamics.
MARCH 2013
I have been working on a new series of work for a group portrait show, 'Limits of Likeness' at Rubicon ARI in May. Here is a sneak preview of work in progress....


FEBRUARY 2013
Marguerite Brown has written a review of my Dymo silhouette series on her blog Visual Pursuits. Click here to read it in full.
The Existential Ponderings of Savina Hopkins - Marguerite Brown (excerpt below)
"...her use of phrases assembled to shape various folks’ heads in profile, much like Victorian cameo pieces of yesteryear, cannot help but issue a deeper resonance beyond the instantly appealing retro aesthetic. These works draw our attention to how the words we say communicate more than we often intend about who we are, our values, ideas, what we think about our place in the world, and as such they touch on that most nebulous concept of personal identity. In doing so this series is quite revealing in its humour, albeit the kind of black humour which is particularly enjoyable. Like getting drunk and jovial at a wake despite being grief-stricken, it’s a bit of a fuck you to the dark unknowables of life."
JANUARY 2013
I am exhibiting a new series of works in a group show at Red Gallery as part of Midsumma.
Yarra Arts - Energy from Stillness
ARTISTS: Matto Lucas, Emma Buckland, Alexander Edwards, Tama Favell, Hillary Green, Jacqueline Gwynne, Savina Hopkins, Cath Johnston, Sol Mann, Renuka Rajiv and Mel Simpson.
Opening: 6 - 8 pm, Wednesday January 16th
Red Gallery, 157 St Georges Rd, Fitzroy, Vic.
Exhibition runs: 16th Jan - 2nd Feb 2013
Gallery hours: Wed - Sat, 11am - 5pm
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Subsumed (detail) - Savina Hopkins vinyl embossing tape on board |
Vinyl ‘Dymo’ embossing tape is typically used for
labelling one’s possessions. In a similar way, our thoughts and stories help
define a person’s identity. By using the labelling tape to form head
silhouettes I am exploring the ways we employ spoken words and unspoken
thoughts to express our perceptions of ourselves and others.
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Penny Webb has written a review of my Dymo work in The Age newspaper (Wed Jan 20th, 2013, pg 13).
'Small Works Get Up Close and Personal for a Big Impact' - Penny Webb (excerpt below)
Suitably reminded by Croce that metaphors enable us to absorb information and make sense of experience, pay a visit, too, to Hopkins' show across town. You are what you think. Savina Hopkins puts this idea to the test, with exquisite works incorporating statements such as ''False dichotomies pay my rent'' and ''Hell is a sparrow trapped in Ikea''.
Exceptionally, the former incorporates additional found graphics (from a bank note bearing a line drawing of a church and therefore beautifully illustrating the dichotomy of God and Mammon). The latter, which is a fabulous combination of pink, red, green and black strips, wittily delineates a bearded jaw with the use of forward slashes on black.
The words, punctuation marks and symbols, which always appear as white, were embossed in strips of coloured self-adhesive vinyl tape by an old hand-held Dymo label printer, then cut, line by line, to a predetermined outline. Assembled, they create profiles of people that are successfully individualised, despite the clunky process.
See the clever delineation of the man's hat by a change of green in ''I won't forget no matter how long it takes''. Except for the pink, the coloured tapes are vintage. Only the most hard-hearted would think wood-grain vinyl is not something to treasure.
These silhouettes have been stuck down onto manila card that has been cut from old-fashioned folders, some printed with intended office use, and these connotations become part of the image.
Hopkins has an ear for a telling phrase, and as you stand close to these works in their splendid timber frames, ideas run in your head as they do in those of her subjects.
- Penny Webb
Photography - Erica Lauthier
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DECEMBER 2012
I have an artwork in the Belle Arti 2012 Prize Exhibition
Opening: 6 - 8 pm, Wednesday 12th December
Venue: Chapman and Bailey - 350 Johnston St, Abbotsford, Vic.
Judges: Sally Smart and Rosslynd Piggot
Exhibition runs: 12 Dec 2012 - 26 Jan 2013
bandaids, paper, linen, pencil and acrylic on linen (2012)
*UPDATE* - Thrilled to have been awarded a 'Highly Commended' for this work!
NOVEMBER 2012
My work has been shortlisted for the PB Towage People's Choice Award, showing at the Atrium Gallery, World Trade Centre, Docklands. Opening: Thurs 8th November, 6- 8 pm (enter via Siddeley St).
OCTOBER 2012
A recent editorial illustration for 'The Place for Judgement in Postmodern Clinical Practice'
SEPTEMBER 2012
Good news! I've been selected as a finalist in the Mission to Seafarers ANL ART Prize. I have used discarded paper fragments from Australian Naval Department files of the 1930's and 40's to construct this collage.
Exhibition: 5th - 31st October, Mission to Seafarers Victoria, 717 Flinders St, Docklands, Vic.
Hours: 12 - 7pm, Wed - Sun
Past Current
collage on paper (2012)
AUGUST 2012
I've been working on some new collages. In an attempt to get rid of stuff, I threw Gombrich's 'Story of Art' in the recycling, then reconsidered...I couldn't resist ripping it up, then doing a little collage, with some old advertising brochures. I feel a little series coming on...
My latest blog post features many nice dice. Click here for more!
JULY 2012
This image was commissioned for the article 'The Four Faces of Depression', to be published in the August issue of Psychotherapy in Australia journal.
JUNE 2012
I created this image in response to the song 'Spiderinajar' by the band IAMLOVEPROOF for their inaugural zine.
APRIL 2012
I contributed images to Something Fine, a collaborative project based on encounters with first love.
MARCH 2012
I have a photographic piece in a show, 'Visions of Self and Others' at the Joyce McGrath Gallery at State Library Victoria.
Opening: 3.30pm, Thursday 29th March, State Library Victoria
The exhibition will be officially opened by Sue Hamilton, Acting CEO and State Librarian.
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Oh me oh my oh - Savina Hopkins (digital print) |
This is a self-portrait carved into the trunk of a spotted gum tree. I documented the portrait over several seasons, watching it transform. As the shallow wound healed, it successively browned, cracked, and the bark shed. The line work of the original image thickened as gradually the image was both absorbed and erased by the continual growth of the tree. My interest in the nature of ageing, the formation and disintegration of identity and memory via this process, and ultimately, my relationship with death all inform this work.
FEBRUARY 2012
One of my latest editorial illustrations for the February issue of 'Psychotherapy in Australia'. The article by Michael Guy Thompson is "'A Road Less Travelled': The dark side of R.D.Laing's conception of authenticity".
DECEMBER 2011
I have some collages in the group show
You Are Here
Opening: 4.30pm, Wednesday 12th December
Venue: Stockroom Gallery - 98 Piper St, Kyneton, Vic.
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Magnetic Passage - Savina Hopkins
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NOVEMBER 2011
My story & image of 'Antique Snails' is included in Leah Annetta's book 'Sunday Service: A History of the Camberwell Market'.
Launch: 10 am, Sunday 5th November 2011, Camberwell Market, Camberwell, Vic.
I created the artwork for the book 'On Being a Supervisee' by Michael Carroll & Maria C. Gilbert. It is a collage piece, created from old suspension files used for filing cabinets. More colours than just 'manilla', I was pleased to discover!
I provided the image for The Shift Theatre's new production 'The Girls in Grey', showing at La Mama, Carlton.
An illustration for an article 'Barking Mad: Too much therapy is never enough' by Andee Jones, published in the November issue of 'Psychotherapy in Australia' journal.