How it started: How it’s going: Darren Nixon and Laura Hopkinson, in dialogue with Natalie Bradbury, PAPER Gallery, 3 July-7 August

How it started How it’s going brings together new work on paper by Darren Nixon and Laura Hopkinson, shown in dialogue with The Fourdrinier writer Natalie Bradbury. For Nixon and Hopkinson as artists, and Bradbury as a writer, the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic have also presented an opportunity to experiment with new media and explore different ways of working. In the past, Nixon and Hopkinson have worked primarily with video, incorporating elements of performance, painting, installation and sculptural intervention. Shown across PAPER and PAPER², the work on display in How it started How it’s going reflects a change of direction for both artists, both of whom are working with paper for the first time. This was prompted in part by the constraints imposed by lockdown, including a lack of access to studio space and a necessity to work with materials found close to hand. 

 Nixon’s resulting work is drawn from a large mass of collages, numbering more than four hundred in total. In these collages, found images, alongside images newly created by the artist, are reworked, redrawn and reimagined in new combinations and pairings, creating absurd, surreal and playful juxtapositions. Hopkinson has developed a series of witty text-based drawings, incorporating elements of wordplay alongside found phrases sourced from Amazon product reviews. As a writer whose work usually entails in-depth research, a tightly controlled style and close attention to detail, Bradbury has sought to rediscover the freedom, looseness and spontaneity of writing freehand on paper, without a pre-determined outcome. From their origins on paper, the bodies of work created by Nixon and Hopkinson have undergone a process of transformation. Scanned and transmitted digitally, the artworks have travelled backwards and forwards between Bradbury, Nixon and Hopkinson as large-scale file transfers. 

These electronic images have formed the basis of an ongoing, three-way collaboration: each has navigated through the work with a shared sense of humour, play and openness to multiple readings. 

The aim of How it started How it’s going is not to present two artists’ work side-by-side; instead, the show offers a snapshot of a conversation in progress. Rather than seeking to interpret or explain, How it started How it’s going sketches out creative connections between the artists’ work, which may act as starting points for further stories.

https://paper-gallery.co.uk/darren-nixon-laura-hopkinson-how-its-going

PAPER #67: How it started How it’s going: Darren Nixon and Laura Hopkinson, in dialogue with Natalie Bradbury 

Exhibition dates: 3 July-7 August 2021 

Opening Times: 11am-5pm every Saturday 

PAPER Gallery, Mirabel Studios, 14-20 Mirabel Street, Manchester, M3 1PJ 

Website: www.paper-gallery.co.uk 

Free