Sydney Contemporary 2025
Hannah Cooper
Harry Martin
Booth: F03
Carriageworks
Sept 11 - Sept 14, 2025
Hannah Cooper
b. 1981, Sydney, Australia
Lives and works on Gundungurra Country, Bundanoon, Southern Highlands, NSW
Hannah Cooper uses traditional cloth-making techniques to produce woven paintings. Production of “ordinary” domestic textiles has heavily influenced Cooper’s artistic work, which plays with (and pushes against) the formal language of geometric abstraction and the structural and creative constraints of weaving. An over-under grid is the basis of all weaving - Cooper’s work is rooted in the ability to emphasise or distort that very simple structure: to stay firmly on the grid or move off it.
Cooper is a self-taught weaver, teaching herself basic techniques on a rigid heddle loom in 2017 and concentrating on simple plain weave blankets made from locally-sourced superfine merino wool. She now weaves on a 12-shaft countermarch floor loom, utilising more complex structures but maintaining a focus on using ethically-sourced fibres. Cooper naturally-dyes thread with plants and animals (leaves, barks, roots, flowers and insects) for use in her artworks.
Harry Martin
b. 1993, Sydney, Australia
Lives and Works in London, England.
Harry Martin is a contemporary painter based in London. Having grown up in the Southern Highlands in Australia and now based in London, Martin is drawn to the viscerally tonal and clean atmospheric landscapes. Martin often uses a dim diffused light to encompass the drama and the spirit of his surroundings. Martin feels simplicity is powerful and that a lot can be said with the subtlety of a mark. Martin’s paintings always portray expanse and express a kind of spiritual connection with the natural landscape. The soul of the place is integral to the notion of Romanticism, to look out over the hills and towards the horizon, to imagine all the possibilities held in the lands that he paints.
Martin’s surfaces are heavily worked and show his ability to create movement and control light. His often rugged surfaces are honest and appropriate interpretations of the hillsides that he paints. Martin aims to convey his scenes in a reduced and striped back way. He is often depicting very active and large skies melding into horizons and attention is given to cloudscapes and mist. These amorphous depictions blend into rolling hills, a gully or dam, hedgerows and grassy fields. Martin with a soft and muted palette is able to set a calming space for the viewer to settle into.
Martin has held several successful solo exhibitions in Australia and overseas with his works in private collections both within Australia and abroad.