There is an immediate tension in Cooper’s work where tactile, sensitive surface traces across the helmet-like weighty bronze matter creating tubular voids, crusted orifices and risky edges: evidence exposing the deeply embodied wrestling where clay has been moulded, creased and folded by the sculptor’s taped hands. There is a patina of delicate blue, grey with a soft apricot bloom.

Cooper’s work deals with disorder, confronting humanities’ restrictions and controls, to examine the abominable sense of desolation and unfettered anxiety that war exposes. Working first intuitively and through assemblage, Cooper captures raw feeling with molten metal, freezing his energy into striated landscapes that invite us to peer in and through unfathomable aspects of human experience.

Currently installed in the garden on a head-high tripod stand, this work can equally exist as an inside work, directly placed on a table-top or other surface.

David Cooper was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire in 1972. He currently lives and works in Suffolk. Cooper studied Fashion at John Moores University followed by an MA in Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins where he went on to become lead designer and head of menswear at Alexander McQueen. More recently Cooper attended Fine Art summer school at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2008. He was a 2021 awardee of the Gilbert Bayes Award for outstandingly talented sculptors. Works have been exhibited extensively in the UK.