CHARLES COOPER'S paintings are ambiguous in nature, graphic in impact and detonated in their surfaces. There is a fine balance between what is seen and what is felt for the viewer. What appear to us at first as geometric compositions with modernist overtones turn out to be allusions to the specific, mundane places of an automobile society. Speed bumps, crossings, car parks and the signs and symbols we see most days as city dwellers are the material subject matter from which the work derives. A familiarity already in place opens our eyes and encourages personal interpretation.

The meaning is how we see these symbols as metaphor for our own journeys. What is the nature of signs and how do we locate and use them? What is their relationship to other forms of navigation and where do we fit in personally and as a community or ?tribe? to the plethora of indicators through which we navigate our daily lives. Cooper does not comment on our responses but gives a platform from which to reinterpret and question what we see and how we perceive.

- Bill Gregory, Sydney, June 2003