I Live Another Life

Studio 1.1

6 October - 30 October

In her first London solo exhibition Emma Coop presents imposing large-scale graphite drawings that suggest a close sustained scrutiny of ambiguous areas of dense foliage and undergrowth. Heavily layered scrawls, delicate touches multiply and coalesce across vast sheets of paper with an intensity that indicate a lengthy duration of mark-making.

Coop states how her drawings “document the desire to escape edges, things and constructs.” However, in avoiding “the daily, conscious and confined” this is not a romantic escape to the country but something of the opposite. Growing up in inner-city Manchester, Coop developed an instinctive curiosity for an enchanted idea of ‘nature’, although she soon came to understand how experiencing a natural environment is something to be sought on one’s own terms.

All the works in this exhibition are the result of interactions with landscape within one mile of Coop’s home in South East London. A second group of drawings depict re-imagined street scenes proposing some relief from all that is human-made. Densely layered graphite obscures traces of urbanity on a series of photographs, offering the viewer an alternative version of a ‘locality’ made distinct by the competing contrast of nature nestling within the urban.

There is nothing precious about Coop’s landscapes and her work contains a multitude of gestures and emotions driven by an inherent restlessness. Containing suggestions of past visitors and opportunities to engage in the illicit, Coop shows us landscapes as places in which things, both playful and dark, are to be discovered.

Emma Coop is the winner of studio1.1‘s Annual LOTTERY SHOW! 2022. For more information or to enter please go to our website.