Richard Hopkinson, Imants Tillers

From: "David Stewart"
To: "Stephen Gard"
Cc:

Thanks a lot Stephen, look forward to seeing you at the reunion! Richard has been found alive and well in Wellington NZ by Graham Leonard! Imants will be amazed.

Deborah, could you please forward this email and the following response to Jenny for Imants when he has time. This is fantastic news.

Richard was also close to Imants over a number of years at STHS and wrote poetry and was interested in history, literature, drama, metaphysics etc. Another lost brother emerges from amongst the dark slippery rocks at the base of Mt Analogue!

My wife and I both greatly enjoyed meeting you at the exhibition last Saturday and listening to your presentation about the artworks that you have curated during the “Meet the artist” session. It is indeed a great credit to you and the gallery. So much effort and time – amazing! Your unique personal approach to the “Imants Tillers -one world many visions” exhibition has certainly revealed a lot of things that have been hidden.

But I personally don’t think Imants suddenly became an artist at any particular or defined point in time and space, but rather that it was in him gradually forming from a very early age like an embryo- probably recognizable during pre-school or earlier as a toddler.

His 1985 Mt Analogue will always be an icon for me and we have completed the jigsaw puzzle to hang in our house. The sheer enjoyment of the family doing the puzzle together as a team but using different techniques was magic! The metaphysical meaning and background of this work is obviously a core theme linking all of Imants’ other more complex work and the significance of connections across time and space are important to me at least in appreciating his later works. I hope others get as much pleasure from seeing the real thing as we did. You can’t just get this from a print.

We also had an enjoyable breakfast with the Tillers family in the gallery café the next morning. We later stood on Black Mountain afterwards on the way home and looked across the terrible Woden Valley and saw that Mt Analogue spoke to us from the distant snow covered hills beyond Lake Cotter. We also think the peace plaque at the main entrance to the tower might warrant mention.

Somehow the Anglo-Saxon god of war, who was also god of the Muse, the head god and the undertaker to the spirit world was at peace with the landscape. Like a scene from the mythic Tolkien novels or a chapter from Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”- so inextricably linked it was quite special but a bond shared by fellow hobbits. Is this not our fate as mere humans to be playthings of a higher purpose seeking a goal we can never attain, or that never ends?

Best wishes
David Stewart
Engineering Manager