Spadge Hopkins

Spadge Hopkins is a sculptor working full time in Suffolk, from a rambling array of barns and sheds. He works mainly in three dimensions in copper and steel, informed by a creative career that took in leadership, product design, the music industry and automotive engineering.

His copper sculptures are variously figurative and explore two of the binaries of sculpture, volume and void, while playing with light and shadow, and are influenced by the work of Alexander Calder. He enjoys the varying colours of copper, particularly after heat treatment and lacquer, the combination of the metal with the shining solder, and the fluidity of shape achievable with this type of construction. Movement is a conscious theme in his natural history subjects, while other pieces concern mystery and the evocation of the past.

The Machin (sic) series is made of found mechanical components in order to explore questions of value, adapting the Nouveau Realiste aesthetic that favoured everyday and discarded objects for poetic ends. A public art commission for the City of Cambridge in 2016 led to a series of drawings laser cut in metal, lit in various ways and often moving within the piece via small electric motors.

He is a former Chair of Waveney and Blyth Arts, has served on the committee of Suffolk Open Studios, and is a member of various East Anglian art groups.

Photo credit: Moggy Photography