Mark Cooper is a sculpture, photographer & product designer. Having grown up in New Zealand to the age of 27, he currently resides in the picturesque UK countryside where he works from his studio rurally tucked away on a working grain & cattle farm in Northamptonshire.
‘Pesce fuor d’acqua’ is a sculptural body of work and is named as such for the mixed foreign influences, inspirations and layered meanings to the artist. The saying found both in Italian and in English (‘a fish out of water’) can be read in a literal sense as the marine inspired forms are immediately evident in the sculpture but are nuanced in context having been created far from the waters edge in middle England. Distanced from the sea, his home shores and culture, this is a foreign place for the artist as much as it is for these sculptured creations.
If the idea for the series was born on the beaches of Italy's south coast, ‘Pesce fuor d’acqua’ is a body of work very much spawned back on the beaches of Eastbourne, Wellington N,Z where Mark grew up. Spending most of his early life in the sea and sand dunes of his home, years were spent playing with beach treasures and being enchanted by the creatures of the oceans and rockpools of wellington harbour and heads.
Formative experiences and emotions of this life period, the love of time spent in small fishing boats with his farther, nets full of fish, crabs, sea-weed and starfish combined with a childhood fascination of sparkling fishing lures is a resource of inspiration for this series.
These sculptures are very much artefacts from his childhood and take the form of museum like pieces from a once rich culture now lost.