Coco Crampton

Coco Crampton (b.1983, London, UK), studied at Norwich School of Art and Design before graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 2014. Co-opting craft traditions through playful gesture, Coco’s work breathes new life into historical forms, ranging from Victorian furniture to 20^th-century design icons. Weaving together function and fiction Coco’s work embodies a performativity, activated in the imagination of the viewer.

Select exhibitions include: Domestic Wears, Belmacz, London (2020-21); RA Summer Exhibition 2020, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2020); Odds, TOMA Project Space, London, (2019); Tender Touches, AMP Gallery, London (2019); Estragon, Belmacz, London (2019); Threshing Barn installation, Charleston, Sussex (2018-19); The Artist Practitioner, The Shoe Factory, Norwich (2018); The Ghosts are in the House, Chopping Block Gallery, London (2018); If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Roaming Projects, London (2018); Alpenglühen: 100 years of Ettore Sottsass Jr, Belmacz, London (2017); RA Summer Exhibition 2017, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2017); Bowers: from form to public, Belmacz, London (2016); RA Summer Exhibition (2016), Royal Academy of Arts, London (2016); All Over, Studio_Leigh, London (2016); Looking At People, Looking At Art, Division of Labour, London (2016); Gradation (recent graduates of the Royal Academy Schools), Art First, London (2016);  Kingly Things (a two-person show with Agata Madejska), Chandelier Projects, London (2015); Handles on Romance & Other Girls also Common Tongue, The Minories Galleries, Colchester (2015); Cassius Clay, Marcelle Joseph Projects, London (2014); Protected Space, two-person exhibition with Jonathan Baldock, Belmacz Gallery, London (2014); A Thing is a Thing is a Thing, The Minories Galleries, Colchester (2012); Slipped, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2012); Bonne Bouche, The Cut, Suffolk (2010); A Skvader, Norwich Castle Museum, Norwich (2009); Views from Afar, Vulpes Vulpes, London (2009); Kunstwerk Bazaar, OUTPOST Gallery, Norwich (2008); “18”, Centre Gallery, Berlin (2008); Swing, OUTPOST Gallery, Norwich (2007); WYSIWYG, F.A.I.T. Krakow, Poland (2006).

Coco was shortlisted for the Dorich House Museum Residency in 2020 and the Dentons Art Prize S/S 2018.

Coco lives and works in London.

A sense of precision criss-crosses Crampton’s installations creating a sense of deliberate display. There are angles, planes or facets on metal, cut hardwood, hammered sheeting and smooth paint, faux finishes, woven fabrics and glazed ceramics, accentuated textures which vie for the viewer’s attention. These contrasts are commanding as they confront the viewer. Stately sculptures come out of simplified jigsaw. The palette of colours gentle, at times feminine, is off set with flat, saturated inks against dull tonalities reminiscent of waiting rooms of the 21st century.

Confident, the works coexist and rival each other to create a visually soothing, pared down prism of the artist’s repertoire, not unlike a meadow, a bower- private yet accessible. At times installed there to stimulate the spectator. Objects are at play, they take over the stage. Feeling of utility in the works’ shapes indicated by the strictness of form, is misleading. A negation by the carefully rendered faux finishes permeates the works. Black and white starkness suggests mixed emotional aggregates. These pieces are not what they seem…

Taken from the historical language of embellishment within the domestic sphere and the everyday useful object, these works become more than they proclaimed to be at first. Under the guise of a refined, somehow, exotic camouflage of saturated paints, knitted patterns out of cinquecento, deliberate marks and splattering, strings and fringing, the artist’s effigies turn into suggestions of something else entirely. They are hieroglyphs and references to ascetic representation, no details seemingly superfluous, but absolutely necessary. Objects take centre stage and turn important. From the modest thrown clay pot to the braided matting, is Crampton ‘s endeavour where modesty and pomp collide.

Publications

a limited edition catalogue (edition size 480) created on the occasion of the solo exhibition Domestic Wears by Coco Crampton.

graphic design: Null Zero

photography: Coco Crampton, Damian Griffiths, Judith Lehmkuhl

texts: Fanny Singer, Ines Weizmann • poem: Toby Upson

retouching: Joana Saramago

printing: Jump (North)

published on the occasion of the exhibition Bowers: from form to public by Coco Crampton at Belmacz. signed and hand coloured edition of 880.

Concept: Belmacz

Photography: Matthew Hollow

Graphic Design: Craig Sinnamon
Printing: Push

Texts: Daniel C. Blight, 2016