Sarah Cooney
My studio based work comprises oil on canvas paintings. Using subtle orchestrations of colour, texture, lyrical gesture and abstract and figurative elements the paintings translate atmospheres and moods that locate a sense of place. Forms emerge and evolve through the process of making and added flourishes are intended to invite closer inspection of the paintings’ surface. Painterly revisions accumulate on the canvas alongside traces of provisional marks rubbed away -in a process of sense making.
I am interested in investing in the nature of painting as its own legitimate subject matter and think about the types of attitude an abstract painting can incite, its timeliness in relation to other current modes of art making and its continued possibilities beyond the histories that inform it. Painting is by nature inconclusive. In the provisional approaches to applying paint, workings and re workings, the shifts and changes along the way; for me, the crux of painting always resides in the indeterminate space between an initial idea and a pictorial emergence and how the discrepancy between the two might be negotiated.
Education
2006-2008 MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London
2002-2005 BA (hons) Fine Art, Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Selected Exhibitions
2021 Your Foot in My Face and Other Tectonic Strategies (organised by Dan-Howard Birt), Kingsgate Project Space, London
2019 Legacy: 50 Years of Painting in the Tees Valley, The Auxiliary, Middlesbrough
2019 Creekside Open (Selected by Brian Griffiths) APT Gallery, London
2018 Beep Painting Prize Exhibition, Swansea College of Art, Wales
2018 Stockton Contemporary, Stockton-on-Tees, UK
2017 Colour Code, Cupola Contemporary Art, Sheffield, UK
2017 Middlesbrough Art Weekender, Middlesbrough, UK
2016 Tell Her Story, Crown Street Gallery, Darlington
2016 Making a Scene (collaboration with Cristina Cojanu), NN Contemporary Art, Project Space Northampton, UK
2015 Mud, Oil and Plastic, Mother Studios Project Space, London, UK
2014 The Trouble with Painting Today, Pump House Gallery, London, UK
2013 Painting Parade, LeandaKateLouise, London, UK
2013 Copy, Paper Gallery, Manchester, UK
2011 Dialogues 10th International Biennial of Contemporary Art, The Central Exhibition Hall. Menege, St Petersburg, Russia
2011 Galleria Regresso, Memorial Do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2010 Nothing Gold Can Stay (curated by Nina Trivedi), 3YE, London, UK
2010 Hats Berlin, Smartloft Apartments and Art, Berlin, DE
2009 Pale Blue and Green (two person show with Jess Flood-Paddock), Permanent Gallery, Brighton, UK
2009 Pretty Deep (inside your head), Royal Standard, Liverpool, UK
2008 Winter Salon, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
2006 Spent, Three Colts Gallery, London, UK
Residencies
2009/10 Smartloft Apartments and Art, Berlin, DE
2005/06 Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre, North Uist
Awards/Prizes
2016 Studio Bursary, Navigator North, Middlesbrough
2011 shortlisted for Abbey Fellowship, British School at Rome
2010 Fringe MK Painting Prize shortlist (included in catalogue selected by Anthony Spira, Stephen Snoddy, Andy Harper, Sally Annett)
2008 Hugh Dunn Award, Worshipful Company of Painter Stainers/Royal College of Art
2006 Greater London Area NAFDAS Bursary Award
2005 Graduate Painting Fellowship, Northumbria University
2005 John Crisp Painting Prize
Talks/Lectures
2017 Panel Discussion, 'Conversations in Painting', Platform A Gallery, Middlesbrough, UK
2009 Panel Discussion, The Royal Standard, Liverpool, UK
2008 Visiting Artist Lecture, Glasgow School of Art
Projects
2017 Conversations in Painting (ACE funded)
2013 Devonshires Developing Artists with Wallspace in the Workplace, London
2009 Young and Emerging Artists Charity Auction, Special Yoga Centre, London, UK
Collections
Middlesbrough Collection held at MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art