Johnnie Cooper now featuring in Groucho Club Art Collection

25 September, 2019

Johnnie Cooper is proud to have his work included in the celebrated and legendary Groucho Art Club Collection, alongside great artists such as Damien Hirst, Joseph Kosuth, Tracey Emin, Sir Peter Blake, Rob and Nick Carter and Yinka Shonibare (MBE) RA. Cooper's 2007 painting Pearl City, Shanghai takes pride of place on the walls in Bernie's Restaurant, next door to works by Charlie Billingham and Miles Aldridge.

Johnnie Cooper | throe on throe | Saatchi Gallery | 19 April - 4 May

Private view: 18 April, 2019

The private view of throe on throe, Johnnie Cooper's first public exhibition in over thirty years, opened on the evening of Thursday 18 April at Saatchi Gallery. The exhibition runs from 19 April - 4 May, 2019.


throe on throe 
presents a major survey of works by acclaimed British artist Johnnie Cooper.

The exhibition comes at a time of heightened interest in the artist. In 2018, as part of its initiative to re-evaluate key twentieth and twenty-first-century artists, art publisher Black Dog Press produced a monograph documenting Cooper's 50-year career; and this eagerly-awaited presentation - his first in London in three decades - will be complemented by further shows in the U.K. and America.

Displayed across two galleries, the show is comprised of more than 50 paintings and sculptures, including works from the 1970s - a time when Cooper appeared alongside Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth with his own solo exhibition to mark the Wakefield Silver Jubilee Festival - and culminates with his most recent atmospheric large-scale oil and acrylic paintings.

Cooper describes his approach to painting as three dimensional; accordingly, this exhibition begins with a collection of his early sculptural works. Chained to the Nest (1974), which depicts a newly-hatched bird struggling to extricate itself from a womb or nest, illustrates his attraction to, in his own words, 'the physicality of the surface', a quality evident in all his paintings.

Since the late 1980s, Cooper has tirelessly investigated the formal limits of painting, experimenting in many genres at his rural Worcestershire studio. throe on throe tracks this progression with examples primarily drawn from five bodies of work: Longdon Marsh (1996 - 2006), A Long Series Of Events (2014), Continuums (2011 - 2016), The Levant Series (2018 - 2019) - up to the present day, with a suite of spectacular paintings entitled The Listener Series realised between 2018 - 2019, works that display broad gestural brush strokes and reflect his love for the natural landscape.

Says Peter Murray, founder and executive director of Yorkshire Sculpture Park: 'Cooper has devoted himself to the investigation of painting through colour, texture and gesture. At times his paintings have seemed to be an extension of his love of the English landscape with the flavour of English artists such as Ivon Hitchens. At other times, the influence of American Abstract Expressionists and Colour Field artists can be sensed, but always his work has an independent and expressive power of its own.' (Johnnie Cooper: Sunset Strip, Black Dog Press, 2018)

Says Saatchi Gallery Director Philippa Adams: 'While this exhibition looks to the future, embracing a new chapter in Cooper's journey, it also reasserts him alongside his peers as an important British artist.' 



Johnnie Cooper : Sunset Strip | Book Launch at Hatchards, Picadilly | February 12, 2019 

We were delighted to celebrate the launch of Johnnie's first monograph, Johnnie Cooper: Sunset Strip, published by Black Dog Press, at the prestigious Hatchards bookshop on Piccadilly on Tuesday 12th  February, 2019.

For the past half-century Johnnie Cooper has devoted himself to a tireless investigation into the nature and potential of painting, constantly exploring new principles and processes in his countryside studio.

This in-depth monograph charts the journey of the artist's signature investigations into colour, line and form,and the development of his practice from sculpture to painting.

Text by Tom Hastings and Peter Murray 


Drinks generously supplied by Chase Distillery and Luc Belaire

Johnnie Cooper: Sunset Strip is available to purchase in-store at Hatchards, from Black Dog Press and here.


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