Julia Cooper: Making Marks 31 March - 24 April 2017
david simon
contemporary 4 Bartlett Street, Bath, BA1 2QZ E: gallery@davidsimoncontemporary.com T: 01225 460189 www.davidsimoncontemporary.com
Julia Cooper: Making Marks Living on the rugged Cornish coast, Julia Cooper is constantly inspired by her surrounding environment. Exploring the coastline, she enjoys finding sun bleached and weathered marine debris, vintage boat timbers and jetsam on the beaches. She often utilizes these materials to create abstract constructions. Julia’s landscapes and coastal paintings often emerge out of the thought processes and physical discoveries of surface textures made when creating the three-dimensional works. Whether creating three-dimensional constructions or paintings, she becomes completely engrossed in the job of adjusting colours, or shapes until the whole looks right. Much of this side of her painting involves scraping back to layers underneath to add texture and visible history of the making. Julia Cooper trained in Fine Art as well as Interior Design and has exhibited her work widely in the United Kingdom. She holds regular solo and mixed exhibitions in Cornwall and Bath.
Aubergine mixed media on panel 22 x 28cm ÂŁ475
Julia Cooper has always enjoyed painting kitchen still lifes, following a timeless tradition of depicting simple shapes such as bowls and jugs, as a mode of studying the juxtaposition of colour. Often she will incorporate repetitive patterns suggesting chequered floor tiles to build a spatial tension within the composition. This sometimes creates flattened and multiple perspectives, acknowledging her inspiration from Cornish artists such as Patric Heron and William Scott.
Cayenne mixed media on panel 22 x 28cm ÂŁ475
Paprika mixed media on panel 22 x 28cm ÂŁ475
Drift mixed media on board 17 x 22cm £450
Into the Woods mixed media on board 14 x 19cm £450
Oyster mixed media on board 18 x 15cm £450
Wasabi mixed media on panel 70 x 100cm £1,950 ‘The term Wabi-sabi represents Japanese aesthetics and a Japanese world view. It means finding beauty in imperfection, modesty, intimacy or austerity. I like to think the objects in my Still Life and the intimacy of the wood constructions are akin to to such an aesthetic, a bit faded and quietly satisfying.’ Julia Cooper, 2017
Mangetout mixed media on panel 70 x 100cm ÂŁ1,950
Cinnamon mixed media on panel 39 x 49cm ÂŁ850
Pistachio mixed media on panel 39 x 49cm ÂŁ850
Frape mixed media on panel 17 x 28cm £465
Kelp mixed media on panel 22 x 28cm £475
Windlass mixed media on panel 22 x 28cm ÂŁ475
Whelk mixed media on panel 22 x 28cm ÂŁ475
Lovage mixed media on panel 60 x 80cm ÂŁ1,450
Alfalfa mixed media on panel 54 x 69cm ÂŁ1,250
Anchor mixed media on panel 23 x 25cm £450
Keel mixed media on panel 21 x 22cm £450
Knot mixed media on panel 21 x 21cm £450
Broach mixed media on panel 21 x 24cm £450
Lavender mixed media on panel 54 x 69cm ÂŁ1,250
Brig mixed media on canvas 80 x 100cm £2,350
Jane Wheeler Ceramics Jane Wheeler was born and raised in Norfolk. Following studies in ceramics at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham, she enjoyed a successful career in fashion design. She returned to ceramics in 2003. For Jane, the vessel is a space-containing hollow form that offers the richest language for working in clay. Its conceptual simplicity allows readings which allude to our most distant cultural pasts, and to the state of being human. Its limitations are those for which the potter’s tools and equipment are designed; it is a familiar scenario within which to work. Thus, it becomes necessary for Jane Wheeler to make working and the work uncomfortable in some way, to push the boundaries in order to attempt discovery of new or hidden qualities of this profoundly significant, yet ordinary object. The apparent fragility and age of these vessels tempers their insistent sense of function, a function that we understand rests on implicit but radical contradictions. The cracks in a bottle form which deny it the possibility of containing a liquid produce a deliberate uncertainty about what constitutes a vessel. The appearance of age and wear, as if the pieces had somehow been weathered and eroded over geological and archaeological timescales, evokes a sense of history and of humanity. Jane’s vessels are made of stoneware clay bodies with added coarse grog, sand, quartz and feldspar granules. reduction fired to 1260-1300 º C with gas. Layers of oxide, slip, and chun glaze producing the textured surface which both reflects and absorbs light and refracts it where the chun gathers into thick runs full of miniscule bubbles.
A selection of 12 ceramics by Jane Wheeler will be shown during this exhibition
david simon
4 Bartlett Street, Bath, BA1 2QZ
contemporary
E: gallery@davidsimoncontemporary.com T: 01225 460189 www.davidsimoncontemporary.com