Advent 2022
Excerpt from a short film about Hopkins by Pete Harley due in 2023
Welcome to this year’s annual team-up between BasementArtsProject and Phill Hopkins for the subscription-only Advent Calendar
With a slight change to the format, we have an introductory film in which Phill talks about his practice as a painter and how this fits with the narrative of his reportage style photography that we have featured in these calendars for the last few years.
Day One
1. 9 January 2022. Near Eccup Reservoir, Leeds.
Sometimes I feel a need to be in a landscape with a big sky above. I like the feeling of smallness and insignificance, in an attempt to get things into perspective. Walking near Eccup Reservoir is one of these places.
Day Two
2. 17 January 2022. Holt Park, Leeds.
When it’s dark I sometimes set my camera to “night” mode. This often means, depending on the available light, that each time I make an individual photograph it takes longer than usual. My little Sony sounds like it is taking lots of individual pictures, searching for light and then instructs me to keep it steady while it puts them all together. At least this is what I think is happening. When I’ve been making photographs I always look forward to, I yearn actually, viewing them on my Mac; I’m always particularly eager when I’ve been using “night” mode.
Day Three
3. 9 February 2022. Cookridge Hall Golf Club, Leeds
This golf course is a very short walk from my home and studio. I use its footpaths to get to somewhere else. For the most part, it’s an ugly place. However, there are a few small areas that seem to have gotten away from the greenskeeper’s eye and taken on a different kind of life. I often stop to watch golfers, usually men, dressed in the right clothes with the right equipment hitting their ball not very close to the hole. During lockdown, in the snow when the course was closed, what seemed like hundreds of children used its various hills and bumps for sledging; a would-be scene from Bruegel perhaps.
Day Four
4. 12 February 2022. Ilkley Moor
Sometimes on Saturdays we might take a trip to Ilkley to walk on the moor above the town. Although it’s a very familiar place I still find it surprising. Its rough landscape, at all times of the year, is remarkably beautiful.
Day Five
5. March 2022. Morecambe Bay
Someone remarked that they thought it unusual that I make so many of my photographs in a portrait format., not to mention drawings and paintings. Perhaps with this format it is easier to capture the horizon line intact. I have welcomed using a landscape format, although it unnerves me. I’ve been captivated by the eyes movement in order to see both ends of the horizon line. It has been liberating to let go into its expansiveness.
Day Six
6. March 2022. Heysham
I remember that for one of my A level art exams in the late 1970’s I made a linocut based on a black and white photograph that I had made on a beach in south Wales and printed myself.
Sometimes I find that my photographs hold something beneath the immediate surface that resonates far beyond its surface
This photograph was made near to Heysham Power Station, a very odd place. I enjoy coming across piles of stone and concrete, wondering what was always there/built there and what has been brought in.
Day Seven
7. April 2022. Alun Bay, Isle of Wight.
There is a glass tube filled with coloured sand from Alun Bay in our bathroom. I hadn't thought that the actual sand there would be that colourful, until I visited the bay. The colour was amazing and I had never considered that colour could be eery. As I stood in front of these mountains of sand I thought of aboriginal artists, Sidney Nolan, the wild west and wondered what it must be like to climb them as a child.
Day Eight
8. 30 April 2022. Grimwith Reservoir
Grimwith Reservoir in North Yorkshire is a very strange place. It’s eerie, to say the least. Its water is a kind of Paynes grey in colour. When making this photograph I was reminded of similar ones I’d made on Vido Island in Corfu, a very different place indeed. On the island I had very playful times, wandering around making funny pictures. The ‘Shadow Self’ series, of which this is one, is very large; predominantly photographs but also includes some drawings and paintings.
Day Nine
9.. 2 May 2022. RSPB St Aidan’s.
I’d never been to St Aidan’s before. I followed a winding path on to the reserve and was met by a huge machine, a dragline crane, called Oddball. It weighs 1,200 tons. I was told that I might see little owls around the crane and although I spent some time quietly watching, none appeared. As I walked I did hear the booming of bitterns. Often cows are kept on reserves in order to manage the vegetation. I remember letting the cows out as a boy. We would chase them through an open gate and then hide whilst the farmer tried to round them up.
Day Ten
10. 22 May 2022. Plas Bach, Bardsey Island
For a long time I have been joining a retreat on the island of Bardsey, off the north west coast of Wales. Sadly, during Covid the retreats were postponed. Thankfully this year we were able to go. It’s become a very important place for me and was introduced to me by my dear friend who is a wonderful priest. The island encourages, often forces, you to look at all the things we normally take for granted. Breakfast and dinner together become high points at the start and end of each day, washing without a bath or shower raises questions about the amount of water I actually need and being surrounded by beautiful wild flowers reminds me of how much of the world I neglect to notice.gs and paintings.
Day Eleven
11. 4 June 2022. St Bees, Cumbria.
I spend time with a young autistic nonverbal man. I enjoy it. We watch a lot of films together. One film I’ve grown to appreciate is Disney’s Fantasia. I’ve noticed that lots of contemporary landscape work look a lot like scenes from the film. I bought my son a copy of the video in the late 1980’s, which has long gone, but I now have it on DVD. Perhaps I should make paintings of unicorns, Micky Mouse or dancing elephants?
Day Twelve
12. 12 June 2022. Porto, Portugal.
I had a big show of paintings and drawings in June, at Galeria Fernando Santos in Porto. It was my first visit to the city. As soon as I arrived I was swept-up by the gallery staff and kept very busy. I had a free day all to myself and the gallery gave me a possibly itinerary. My plan was to walk along a very long avenue from the city’s centre down to the sea and beyond. What I had neglected to realise was the temperature; I was of course, an Englishman abroad. I had the time to myself and the opportunity to stop whenever I liked to make photographs; I had three batteries for my camera. Eventually, after walking for over four hours, visiting the wonderful Museu Serralves and touching the sea, I decided that I had probably done enough, so headed back to my hotel for a swim.
Day Thirteen
13. 24 July 2022. Bolton Abbey Estate.
Whilst I’m dropping back to make photographs or to look at or listen to a bird or to summon a horse from across its field, I’m constantly saying to Susie, shouting if I’m a long way behind, “Wait for me!” Sometimes she will wait and sometimes will ignore me. On this day at Bolton Abbey, we found some new places to explore as we hadn’t entered through the normal entrance.
Day Fourteen
14. 30 July 2022. Broad Haven Beach, Pembrokeshire.
Whilst at Goldsmiths as a student, every Wednesday Glen Baxter would hold the ‘Wednesday Event’. On one occasion he screened a film shot looking out of a shop window as people passed by. Whoever made it, added an invented commentary, giving instructions such as, “can the lady with the hat walk in from the left please”. I’ve always remembered this film. Sometimes I play a commentary in my head whilst looking through my camera.
Day Fifteen
15. 1 August 2022. Druidstone Haven, Pembrokeshire.
The landscape and the sea in West Pembrokeshire have become very important to me. Many of the small coves are called “havens” and they certainly feel like a place to be held. Although I had been here before, many times, a visit in 2016 resonates powerfully with me. It was a time in between the vote to leave the EU and Trump’s election. For me the solidness and beauty of the land has helped me to focus away from myself onto something lasting. On many of the beaches, when looking back to the rocks, I can see the paintings of Graham Sutherland.
Day Sixteen
16. 8 August 2022. St Ismael, Carmarthenshire.
I really like this photograph and I’ve even made a drawing from it. Perhaps one day I may make a large painting from it. We were celebrating my birthday a few days early. I had made a hearth with very large rocks the day before to try out the fire; it burnt and cooked wonderfully.
Day Seventeen
17. 17 September 2022. Scarborough
My feet are big and often they seem a long way down. I notice them more these days. I’ve realised how grateful I am to them. My feet allow me to be anchored, to feel and experience the ground. There is something very powerful in being where the land meets the water. It is thrilling to walk in the shallows there. I walk whilst watching my feet, being in the moment of each step.
Day Eighteen
18. 19 September 2022. Netherby, North Yorkshire
During the first lockdown we discovered a walk that included a huge field full of turnips. We call this walk the ‘turnip’ walk. When last we walked it, hoping to see turnips again, we found a field full of sunflowers. It was at the end of the growing season and they were all starting to bow their heads towards autumn. I stopped to talk with a very elderly farmer, who told me the seeds were going to be bird food.
Day Nineteen
19. 3 October 2022. Petticoat Lane, London
I was transfixed by this small pink dress. It hung in its clear plastic that encapsulated it like a halo, tossed around by the breeze. I was reminded of a white dress I had seen a few months earlier in Berlin, part of a sculpture by Anselm Kiefer.
Day Twenty
20. 24 October 2022. Near Mablethorpe.
I like making photographs by looking directly into the sun. The majority of them are not very good and are very quickly deleted. Perhaps there’s something about baring oneself to its energy. When a boy I would set fire to paper by holding a magnifying glass above it in line with the sun. I would watch as the paper started to discolour and then smoke would appear. We made fires very easily like this. Sometimes we used the lens on each others hands as a dare. We also knew not to look directly at then sun when using binoculars, otherwise you would be blinded. We also knew not to swallow bubble gum, otherwise it would work its way down into your lungs.
Day Twenty-One
21. 26 November 2022. No Name Steps, Redcliffe, Bristol.
I remember last year making similar photographs on these steps. They bring you up from the river side. I purposefully had my camera on the “night” setting, but I forgotten to tell Susie that I wanted to try some photographs. It had been raining so I had my camera in my pocket. We’d just been to the pub for a pint and I had that breathy-beery taste in my mouth, the taste that wants you to drink more. So Susie came back and rewalked the steps. When I posted one of these kind of photographs on Instagram last year someone wanted to buy it and thought it was a watercolour. The steps were very dark, so I really don’t know where my camera got all these colours from.
Day Twenty-two
22. 26 November 2022. East Dundry Road, looking down on Bristol.
There’s really not much to this photograph, unless you are me or know Hartcliffe in South Bristol. In the photograph foreground are the remains of fireworks left over from Bonfire Nigh, I presume. In the band beyond the green field is Hartcliffe, a large postwar council estate. Further on there is Brunel’s Suspension Bridge. My parents with my one year old brother moved to Hartcliffe in 1958, into an almost new council house. I was born a few years later. I lived in Hartcliffe until I was 21 and then moved to Goldsmiths in London. The estate has a remarkable position; on one side is the city and then on the other Dundry Hill leads up to Somerset. I spent the majority of my childhood on this hill looking down at tiny houses and across to the beautiful landscape of Somerset. This place holds a magnetic resonance for me. I love it. My parents, now in their 90s, are making plans to move somewhere else more manageable and I feel a great sadness as this is all that I have known.
Day Twenty-three
23. 4 December 2022. Riffa Woods, North Yorkshire
I love seeing tracks in muddy fields, especially those left by tractors. It reminds me of the work of the sculptor Richard Long, who like me, was also born in Bristol. I’m also reminded of my time as a boy working on Mr Manning’s farm. During the winter we took the tractor and trailer out with food for the cows. Sometimes if there was something heavy to lift Mr Manning would ask me to drive the tractor whilst he worked on the trailer.
One more image tomorrow . . .