Born in London (1998), Savanna Hopkinson is an emerging, multi-disciplinary artist, currently completing Honours in Fine Arts at UNSW Art and Design. Savanna lives and works between the unceded lands of the Gundungurra and Darug (Blue Mountains) and the lands of the Bidjigal and Gadigal (Paddington). She works predominantly with image, installation, clay and glass whilst employing methodologies of simultaneity, fragmentation and unfixed assemblage. Savanna engages with rock formations to observe and record intra-actions between the lithic site and the site of the body. Her work exists at the intersection of ontological and geological fields of enquiry, where geologies can be reimagined through art practice to exceed dominant modes of enquiry and develop expanded perspectives. Savanna is currently working alongside renowned Polish- Australian artist Izabela Pluta whilst she resolves some major projects for 2021. This year, Savanna will exhibit in the opening show for the new Kudos Galleries and will exhibit in the AD Annual at UNSW Galleries at the end of the year. Savanna has exhibited in a number of shows, including at The Dame Elizabeth Murdoch Gallery, AD Space, Randwick Community Centre and the National Gallery of Victoria and in 2018, she appeared as a guest speaker for the National Gallery of Victoria.

LITHICBODY

In this third iteration of my current research project 'LITHICBODY', I make lithic-body hybrids that become 'rock editions'. These rock editions are derived from an alternative way of geologising. I scale the edges of lithic formations looking for fragmented shards of rock that have been dislodged. This tactic entails holding the rock fragment, feeling it's weight and moving with the rock in suspension. I encapsulate areas of the rock with thin layers of clay and press into it. I then peel off the layer and repeat this method again and again. The clay tears and disfigures, and in this process it records the ridges of the rock and my hand as they intra-act and the lithic- body relationship is materialised. With this methodology, the body and site are implicated, inextricably linked and used to explore and document a relationship with geologic site. Materiality becomes a learning apparatus in this methodology. These alternative learning methods exceed dominant modes of geologic enquiry, such as extraction, displacement and objectification and in turn, departs from the mechanisms and embodied practices that bring about particular ways of knowing. These rock editions are a means of observing, researching and learning 'with' lithic formations and in turn, resist the compatibility and standardisation that occurs as materiality shifts towards the discursive.