Press and Editorial
CHARLES COOPER
12 March 2010Bill Gregory
» View CHARLES COOPER exhibition
CHARLES COOPER'S new work at Annandale Galleries has produced a dramatic shift in his oeuvre. These new paintings seem to literally be ready to fly off the walls, perhaps due to the sail or wing-like configuration of the paintings. There is an exultation and sense of freedom experienced by the viewer with these paintings that makes the act of looking an experience transcending the everyday viewing of artworks.
Cooper?s subject matter has remained similar to past work. He is concerned with the communal space of the roadway and a theme that has occupied the artist for over two decades ? landscape as allegory. What appear to us at first as geometric compositions with some modernist overtones turn out also to be ? sometimes quite specific ? mundane sites such as speed bumps, pedestrian crossings and car parks. Signs and symbols we see everyday in the city but take little notice of are the subject matter from which the work derives. There is a close study on the part of the artist of Aboriginal art. Aboriginal art are often depictions of specific sites and may almost be classed as maps. Cooper translates some of these ideas and processes into our city environment as well as situating the work in the continuum of Western art-history.
In the past, Cooper often presented work and ideas in a somewhat deadpan or perhaps ironic mode. The artist has always wanted the primary response to come from within the viewer but this time he has allowed us more room to move in terms of our own responses and emotions. Cooper has to some extent thrown caution to the wind, widened the platform on which his work rests and leaped into the unknown. The results are both a major turning and jumping off point for one of Sydney?s much-loved artists and I believe his best work to date.
CHARLES COOPER lives and works in Sydney and teaches at the National Art School He has had nearly twenty solo exhibitions since 1977 and participated in over forty group shows since 1974. His work is in numerous public and private collections in Australia and overseas. This is his third solo exhibition at Annandale Galleries.
» View CHARLES COOPER exhibition
CHARLES COOPER'S new work at Annandale Galleries has produced a dramatic shift in his oeuvre. These new paintings seem to literally be ready to fly off the walls, perhaps due to the sail or wing-like configuration of the paintings. There is an exultation and sense of freedom experienced by the viewer with these paintings that makes the act of looking an experience transcending the everyday viewing of artworks.
Cooper?s subject matter has remained similar to past work. He is concerned with the communal space of the roadway and a theme that has occupied the artist for over two decades ? landscape as allegory. What appear to us at first as geometric compositions with some modernist overtones turn out also to be ? sometimes quite specific ? mundane sites such as speed bumps, pedestrian crossings and car parks. Signs and symbols we see everyday in the city but take little notice of are the subject matter from which the work derives. There is a close study on the part of the artist of Aboriginal art. Aboriginal art are often depictions of specific sites and may almost be classed as maps. Cooper translates some of these ideas and processes into our city environment as well as situating the work in the continuum of Western art-history.
In the past, Cooper often presented work and ideas in a somewhat deadpan or perhaps ironic mode. The artist has always wanted the primary response to come from within the viewer but this time he has allowed us more room to move in terms of our own responses and emotions. Cooper has to some extent thrown caution to the wind, widened the platform on which his work rests and leaped into the unknown. The results are both a major turning and jumping off point for one of Sydney?s much-loved artists and I believe his best work to date.
CHARLES COOPER lives and works in Sydney and teaches at the National Art School He has had nearly twenty solo exhibitions since 1977 and participated in over forty group shows since 1974. His work is in numerous public and private collections in Australia and overseas. This is his third solo exhibition at Annandale Galleries.