COOP
A series of collaborative works with the Artist Clio Lloyd-Jacob
Coop works on issues arising from creative collaboration, unpacking the failures and triumphs of two people co-creating. Coop uses shadows, projections, and reflections in an evolving tableau vivant, where each element serves multiple functions and is transformed by participation in the performance.
Coop has been working together since 2016, with a history of previous collaboration. Their works are site-specific. Coop exhibited “Truce” at the Camberwell Arts Festival (June 2018), “U turn” at Martyr’s Gallery, Lewes (September 2018), “What is Lost” at the Ruskin Gallery, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge (November 2018), “Re:turn” at Heong Gallery, Cambridge (March 2019), and “Vanitas” at Art Licks’ festival “Interdependence” (October 2019).
Coop’s working practices and subject matter have grown directly from the patterns and tensions within our collaboration. As we attempt co-production, divergences emerge, and the cracks and gaps in the ideas grow to the point of threatening our working bond. We examine our failings and start again, viewing the process as a metaphor for the larger societal issues of reaching any sort of shared understanding or agreement.
The process of recording, refining, and presenting these interactions brings the paradoxical human flows of attraction and repulsion into focus. Human needs seek a response, but the perception of that response is unstable. Layers of fantasy develop in interpreting this—some poetic, some useful, and some destructive.
Clio Lloyd-Jacob