FOCUS ON SAM hopkins

Beyond the Surface went public for the first time at Sculpture at Bathers 2025, a sculpture event overlooking the Indian Ocean on Australia’s west coast.

Beyond the Surface a Corten and Stainless-steel sculpture by Sam Hopkins

It continues Sam Hopkins’ advocacy for the environment, and his curiosity about the human condition.

The elegant arc defies the sturdiness of the Corten and Stainless-steel materiality.

A childhood alongside a Perth Hills nature reserve left a legacy and language.

Sam speaks of the majesty of nature, and - in recent years - concern.

2030 a six metre tall, hand welded, aluminium sculpture by Sam Hopkins

Nervous and vascular systems. Mycelium, the root system branching, threading, communicating between plants; the sculpture 2030 (above) infers the networks cooperating within and without.

The accelerating dry; a catastrophic reduction of the tree canopy. Fire ravaging the land. A freak flood in the Gooseberry Hill studio he shares with mentor, Johannes Pannekoek.

The aluminium tree delivers an uncompromising statement.

In five years, ‘the threat of climate change to ecosystems and the bioclimatic limit of trees will be irreversible. The tree is a looming skeleton of this once great life-giver, now destroyed by the lives it had given’.

Environmental scrutiny underlies most of his large-scale public art in mega public events like Sculpture By the Sea (SxS) in Bondi on the east coast, and Cottesloe beach on the west coast of Australia.

Balancing Act (below) won an Artist Peer Award. The enigma of hard versus soft, metal inflation transforming rigorous steel into a pile of soft pillows precariously balanced. A bemusing contradiction between ‘weightlessness and heft’.

Balancing Act a Corten steel, Gabion basket plinth and WA moss rock sculpture by Sam Hopkins

Sam’s expertise in sculpture installation has ignited broader knowledge - engineering  solutions for large-scale public artworks safely and elegantly displayed outdoors.

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