NGS weekday viewing
Amanda Hopkins
4th August to 15th September 2017
Open eve 7th August 7-9pm
Amanda Hopkins captures the flora, fauna and dramas of Shoreham’s Darenth Valley, just 11 miles from Bromley. Her work revisits this ‘Valley of Vision’ that inspired artist Samuel Palmer two centuries ago. Amanda exhibits nationally and works to commission.
Amanda Hopkins’s work is rooted in a specific time and place. For this exhibition her focus is on the Darenth Valley, only 11 miles from Bromley. Almost 200 years ago artist Samuel Palmer and poet William Blake discovered the Darenth countryside around Shoreham, Kent. There, in his ‘Valley of Vision’, Palmer created his famous, lyrical works – and a still prevalent stereotype of idyllic rural life. Yet even then, Palmer’s vision was at odds with the realities of 19th century life: hunger, riots and hayrick burning.
Amanda Hopkins works in Shoreham today. Like Palmer, she records flora, fauna, life and time passing in the ‘Valley of Vision’. Her work explores both the stereotypical rural idyll – for example plants and allotment crops changing with the seasons – and how 21st century life butts in, be it the
aftermath of game bird shoots for city gents or the unrecorded torching of stolen cars.
Amanda Hopkins exhibits nationally and works to commission for private clients and public bodies such as Essex County Council and the National Trust.