Burden

About the work

Title: Burden
Artist: Paul Hopmeier
Material: mild steel hot metal sprayed and painted
Location: Foster Park, Double Bay

NSW based artist Paul Hopmeier creates abstract steel sculptures but brings sensibility to the genre that has more to do with the tradition of carving.

‘I started making it the year after our daughter was born. Pregnancy was something of a surprise. Choosing parenthood presumed severe restrictions on our sculpture. My wife made her largest and most ambitious sculpture to that time while pregnant, contemplating that it may have been her last. After adjusting our new lives to the best thing that had ever happened to us, the option of making sculpture was still very much there. Burden was an act of faith in the future; if a very impractical one. The sculpture weighs 750kgs and is very awkward to move.’ Paul Hopmeier

Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Rosemary Foot AO.