Julia Hopkins

Rome wasn't built in a day, wax, charcoal and cardboard, 2018

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Process is fundamental to my practice. It is only through an investment of time, repetitiveness and stamina that facades can be pushed through and newness made to emerge. 

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The starting point for this body of work was the appearance on my studio wall of a kind of fossil as I wiped the wall with a charcoal-dirty rag. The fossil was the remains of a sculpture I'd made directly on the wall with modelling wax and afterwards scraped off. 

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I tried recreating these fossils by using modelling wax to draw on various surfaces and then pulling and scraping the wax off before rubbing the surface with a dirty rag. The wax drawings started to become large, monochrome, wax paintings which were interesting in themselves but ultimately it was the discarded wax scrapings that drew my attention; piles of wax lines, twists and pickings that I had torn, pulled and scraped off with my nails before absent-mindedly stock-piling ready for the next experiment. 

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