Georgie Hopton

Georgie Hopton has generously produced The Scattered Sky, 2020, a limited edition artwork on the occasion of her work being acquired for Tate’s collection of British art.

Hopton creates collages in beautiful and strange compositions which allude to the natural world. For her Tate edition, Hopton has used paper from a range of sources, including paper shops in Europe and vintage wallpaper rolls, as well as pieces of yarn to create a unique collage. The collage was scanned with a high-definition flatbed scanner, capturing its textures and shadows, then printed in an edition of 40 with pigment ink and silkscreened spot varnish. Hopton, who is interested in the illusions created by layering, has then hand-finished each print with marbled paper and yarn.

Of The Scattered Sky, Hopton says: ‘My studio windows look onto a high wall that cuts a hard, vertical line across the sky. The red bricks create my own personal horizon line. To have this view gives me a stage onto which I cannot help but project my hopes, fears, dreams and musings. The sky reflects them back at me in the shape and movements of its clouds, its shades of grey and white, its hues of blue, pink and orange.The sky’s capacity is limitless, into which we all fit. I urge you - take your space in it!’

• Artist Georgie Hopton
• Artwork The Scattered Sky
• Dimensions 43 x 34 cm
• Material Digital pigment print with silkscreened spot varnish, hand-finished with marbled paper and yarn
• Edition Edition of 40, signed and numbered
• Date of work 2020

Georgie Hopton (b. 1967) graduated from Central St Martins in 1989. Working in two and three dimensions, her practice has incorporated almost every discipline over the years, but for some time now she has devoted most of her time to collage, printmaking and textile works, which incorporate rugs, fabric and wallpaper. Amassing a huge collection of fine and mass-produced papers and yarns, the artist mines these along with collected and dried fragments from the natural world to create her collages. Rooted in an unending fascination with the auricula flower and her memories and relationships with living and remembered rural landscapes, these collages exist alongside her seasonal production of Vegetable Prints and repeat patterns that grew out of a passion for vegetable gardening, which has extended into her studio practice each season.

Hopton has exhibited widely, including solo shows at Lyndsey Ingram (UK), Poppy Sebire (UK), Milton Keynes Gallery (UK), Cabinet (UK) and Brancolini Grimaldi (Italy), and group shows at The Foundling Museum (UK), The Lowry (UK), Spike Island (UK), Kate MacGarry (UK), The New Art Centre (UK). Spruth Magers, (Germany), Flag Art Foundation (NY) and Galeria Lema, Sao Paolo (Brazil). She was shortlisted for the MaxMara Art Prize in 2007 and has public artworks at both the Royal London Hospital and the Home Office. Her work is included in the Arts Council and Tate Collections. She lives and works in London and upstate New York.