Holly Hooper (b.1991) is a British artist, born and currently living in London. She obtained her BA (Hons) in Communication Design from London College of Communication, UAL, in 2013. She subsequently worked as a theatre producer and designer in London for five years. Moving in to the glass industry in 2018, she worked as a hot shop assistant before completing her MA in Ceramics and Glass at The Royal College of Art in 2023.
Holly Hooper
We are not closed circuits plastic wrapped - without words things still speak to us, jolt us, pain us, free us and change us. The outside world.. is not a painted backdrop to our lives and experiences, but makes them, is part of them.
Strangers; Essays on the Human and Nonhuman, Rebecca Tamás
My work is influenced by the power of memory and its connection to place. It is an exploration of the distant glimpses of recollection, the uncanny feeling of walking on familiar ground and the lingering smells of a place you can’t quite remember. I’m interested in how these memories manifest as colours, shapes, and textures.
Attempting to encapsulate the feeling of awe when falling in love with a particular location, despite not fully understanding the reasons why, and exploring the nostalgia for somewhere visited long ago, where fragments of memories reside.
My influences range from the vivid neon greens and lavender hues you can find in spring, in the bluebell forest near where I grew up, to my travels through the Atacama Desert in Chile, immersed in the dusky orange sands and the vast night sky.
However, what I remember is not necessarily what others remember. Therefore, the work is intentionally abstracted, allowing viewers to interpret and see what they want to see, creating their own narratives and memories of place.
Through the weaving together of these images, I construct new environments filled with anticipation. Using a meticulous process of layering multiple colours, the work transforms with the shifting light throughout the day. An internal glow emanates, evoking a sense of magic and fantasy akin to the concept of reimagined environments.
It is an invitation to explore the deep connections between personal experiences, emotions, and the physical world, as we construct our own narratives and forge lasting impressions of the spaces we inhabit.
Pâte de verre glass panels moving through neon greens to bluebell blues. All eight panels are framed in a steel frame so they can stand freely and interact with the light. The process of layering different glass colours has created a dreamy internal glow that is all about the light flowing through the work.
Medium:
Pâte de verre panels (glass frit)Size:
33x28cm (per panel)Medium:
Pâte de verre panels, steel frameSize:
160x70cm
Medium:
Pâte de verreSize:
20x10cm (each test)
This work invites the viewer to circle the piece and experience a concertina of shifting terrains from the desert of the Atacama to the lush green countryside of my home and casting up to the night sky.
A micro monolith to a tense, fragile and fractured environment.
Soldered connections work as bridges and ladders from location to location. Bulging seams creating tension and bringing in to focus the fragility of the glass panels and the geographical locations they represent.
Medium:
Pâte de verre panels, solderSize:
40x30x12 cm
An assortment of vessels experimenting with colour mixes to convey a variety of locations. Used as colour tests for the final works.
Medium:
Pâte de Verre (glass frit)
A collaboration with Giles Watkins, experimenting with materials to create a symbiosis between the glass frit that I work with and the ceramic pigments from Giles' practice. The shades are made using the pâte de verre process whilst the bases' are a ceramic pigment worked in to the body of the clay.
In Collaboration with:
Medium:
pâte de verre, ceramic, metal fixtures
