Our Arch 8 artist-in-residence Monday 12th-Sunday 18th November is Emma Coop.
Emma Coop is a British Artist who lives and works in London. She holds an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design.
The drawings of Emma Coop are quiet and reflective, they invite the viewer to look and to be immersed in their detail. Repeatedly making drawings of the sea, Coop has a connection with late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Romanticism, whereby a landscape could summon a visual representation of an emotional state.
Coop’s work examines the nature of ‘a moment’ or, by contrast, the lengthy unraveling of time. The drawings created depict split second moments, yet take considerable time to make. Her work slowly dwells on the assimilation of detail to the point where by the process of drawing becomes an mesmeric act in itself. The resulting artworks express this laboured process along with it’s inherent futility and desire.
Emma Coop will use her time at Bowling Harbour to make a series of studies of the surrounding waterscape. She will consider the unique intricacies of the landscape, including it’s atmosphere and expression. She is particularly interested by the pairings made of the locality by Horatio McCulloch in the nineteenth century and how the landscape is returning to a pre-industrial experience.
https://emmacoop.com/
Interview with Emma Coop
What were your initial thoughts, ideas, encounters with the Harbour and the wider environment?
I started my work researching at home before I travelled up to Scotland, this proved helpful, as I arrived with some direction, however work unfolded in an organic and unexpected way over the course of the week, a process I very much enjoyed.
What ideas or processes become the focal point of your work during the week?
Really the starting point was my research of pre-industrial paintings of the area by Horatio McCulloch from the Romantic era. But this initial direction evolved as I discovered the post-industrial present day landscape, both visually, socially and economically.
What relationship did the different media within the final gallery space have to each other- the film, the photography, the drawings?
The show at the end encompassed drawing, photography and video, I think the strand that linked them was a mood, a reference to the sublime, and of imbuing a landscape with an overwhelming emotion. There is an air of nostalgia, wonder, unease, uncertainty and fear surrounding the work I have showed.
… I didn’t show everything I made during the residency but after making a work I saw as pivotal, IN SEARCH OF HORATIO, which was comprised of 18 photographic prints documenting my search for the view of a painting made by Horatio McCulloch, which then led me to the Erskine Bridge and research of the suicides that had been committed from there. I ended up taking a more curated approach to the work I showed and made. I started to see a show in my head and look at my ideas and starting points for work, as being parts in a larger work…
What became your concluding images, memories, thoughts about the harbour/Scotland/the residency?
I fell in love with the area, the way urbanity intermingles with such extremes of landscape made everyday dramatic visually and creatively -this sounds cheesy but it was just very good creatively. I am missing the colours and moody skies! I really hope I can come back to work again, it was a fantastic experience and enormously helpful to my practice
What were your initial thoughts, ideas, encounters with the Harbour and the wider environment?
I started my work researching at home before I travelled up to Scotland, this proved helpful, as I arrived with some direction, however work unfolded in an organic and unexpected way over the course of the week, a process I very much enjoyed.
What ideas or processes become the focal point of your work during the week?
Really the starting point was my research of pre-industrial paintings of the area by Horatio McCulloch from the Romantic era. But this initial direction evolved as I discovered the post-industrial present day landscape, both visually, socially and economically.
What relationship did the different media within the final gallery space have to each other- the film, the photography, the drawings?
The show at the end encompassed drawing, photography and video, I think the strand that linked them was a mood, a reference to the sublime, and of imbuing a landscape with an overwhelming emotion. There is an air of nostalgia, wonder, unease, uncertainty and fear surrounding the work I have showed.
… I didn’t show everything I made during the residency but after making a work I saw as pivotal, IN SEARCH OF HORATIO, which was comprised of 18 photographic prints documenting my search for the view of a painting made by Horatio McCulloch, which then led me to the Erskine Bridge and research of the suicides that had been committed from there. I ended up taking a more curated approach to the work I showed and made. I started to see a show in my head and look at my ideas and starting points for work, as being parts in a larger work…
What became your concluding images, memories, thoughts about the harbour/Scotland/the residency?
I fell in love with the area, the way urbanity intermingles with such extremes of landscape made everyday dramatic visually and creatively -this sounds cheesy but it was just very good creatively. I am missing the colours and moody skies! I really hope I can come back to work again, it was a fantastic experience and enormously helpful to my practice
