Untitled, Interior 72 X 102 cm Graphite Damar resin on paper Aluminium
Untitled, Still life 72 X 102 cm Graphite Damar resin on paper / Aluminium
Forbidden Fruit, 72 X 102 cm Pastoral, 72 X 102 cm Graphite Damar resin on paper 2026
Christopher Cook
Pastoral, 72 X 102 cm Graphite Damar resin on paper / Aluminium
Still Life with Pangolin, Pastoral, 72 X 102 cm, graphite, Damar resin on paper / Aluminium
Reconnaissance. Pastoral, 72 X 102 cm
Graphite Damar resin on paper / Aluminium
Untitled, Still life 72 X 102 cm Graphite Damar resin on paper / Aluminium .
Christopher Cook was born in Yorkshire, England, and studied Literature at Exeter University and MA Painting at the Royal College of Art, London. He took up an Italian Government scholarship for three years to work in Bologna, where his colour paintings of this period featured in high-profile exhibitions such as From Bacon to Now at the Palazzo Vecchio in
Florence, and Eros in Albion at the Casa Masaccio, and in solo shows in London.
Two years in India changed his painting approach to a more haptic practice in which sand drawings inspired a switch to monochrome graphite. These works were soon exhibited internationally, especially in the USA through Mary Ryan Gallery, and entered major collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; the Yale Centre for British Art; and in the UK, the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum.
The ‘graphites’ received major prizes in the UK, including at the prestigious John Moores Liverpool. Notable solo show include Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Heidelberger Kunstverein, Germany; and York Art Gallery, UK, in which meditations on Dutch 17th-century still life painting were exhibited alongside masterworks from York’s collection and loans from the National Gallery, London.
This theme reemerged during a residency in Taiwan (2023), works from which were exhibited at Chini Gallery, Taipei in 2024. A retrospective of eight exhibitions with Mary Ryan Gallery was held in New York in 2026.
ChristopherCook CV
Solo exhibitions
2026 Mary Ryan Gallery, New York
2024 Chini Gallery, Taipei
2020 Sunny Art Centre London
Saul Hay Gallery Manchester
Group Exhibitions
2026 Contemporary British Painting Prize, Sheffield and London
Another World, Frestonian Gallery, London
2025 John Moores Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery
2024 Paradise Lost The Underground Stream, South Devon, UK
2022 Paper after All, Royal Cambrian Academy Conwy
2020 Recent Acquisitions, York Art Gallery
New Light, Scarborough Art Gallery (and tour)
Awards (graphite works only)
2020 Jackson’s Painting Prize, First Prize, (Still Life)
2019 Sunny Art Prize, First prize.
2017 New Light First Prize
2013 Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, Liguria, Italy
2009 PAS Scholar, British School at Rome
2006 British Council Award, Beijing
2005 Daiwa Award, Yokohama Triennial
2004 British Council Award, University of Memphis, USA
2001 Arts Council England Residency, Eden Project Cornwall UK
2000 AHRC award, Bundanon Trust, Australia
1999 John Moores XXI Prizewinner
Collections
British Museum
Cleveland Museum USA
Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge
Haugesund Billedgalleri, Norway
Metropolitan Museum of Art New York
Minneapolis Museum of Art
MIMA, Middlesbrough
Nicosia Municipal Art Centre, Cyprus
Today Art Museum Beijing
Victoria and Albert Museum
Yale Center for British Art, USA
Yokohama Museum of Art
York Art Gallery
A MODEST SHOW
ARTISTS MENTORING PROGRAMME
An opportunity for artists living or actively working in Greater Manchester.
Mentors:
Will Lunn, Dean Kenning, Nat Pitt, Larry Achiampong, Claire Mander
A MODEST SHOW
A Modest Show is the collateral programme to British Art Show 9. As British Art Show 9 reached the 3rd city on its year-long tour, Manchester responded with a parallel programme of artist-led activity. A Modest Show asked artists to devise work under satirical themes of food, hospitality, consumption and dining... and it invited audiences to EAT MANCHESTER ARTISTS!
The full curatorial statement can be found here:
A Modest Show was devised as a response to the British Art Show 9 programme; and as important as it to attract and create events and new exhibitions - our focus is on positioning Manchester's artists alongside the internationally profiled artists on the BAS9 tour.
A MODEST SHOW IN SUPPORT OF GREATER MANCHESTER ARTISTS
Alongside its public facing programme, A Modest Show is creating opportunities to support artists in their endeavours and professional development.
Our mentoring programme, places UK exhibiting artists, curators and arts professionals with emerging Manchester artists to take part in a series of 1-1 sessions and studio visits, funded by A Modest Show.
Each selected artist will be connected with their mentor, and can then directly arrange times for a face to face studio visit of 2-3 hours, followed up by two 1 hour video calls to follow up on progress and milestones created in the sessions.
APPLICATION
This opportunity is open to artists and curators living or actively working in Greater Manchester.
Please read the details below and submit the following to help us with selection and, if successful, pair you with a mentor:
Submit a PDF document including:
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Either a short text, CV or video/sound recording maximum 500 words / 10 mins detailing your artistic practice. Please include a reference to 2-3 recent exhibitions, commissions or projects that have been a highlight of your current practice.
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Include a short text, bullet points, or video/sound recording maximum 200 words / 5 mins on what you would like to get out of this process, any areas you would like mentorship on.
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A link to your website or an online portfolio if you have one
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Your name, address, email and telephone
Submissions should be sent to: lydia@unculturedcreatives.co.uk
Deadline: November 1st 2022 12pm
Enquiries: curator@amodestshow.com
MENTORS
Dean Kenning is an artist and writer. From Hounslow, west London, he studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and completed a PhD at the London Consortium, developing a critical theory of ‘idiocy' in art.
He makes motor and sensor based kinetic sculptures that seek to generate nervous and affective responses (‘vitalist kinetics'). He also has a wide-ranging diagramming practice (‘exploratory diagrams') traversing art practice, theory and pedagogy. His video and performance-based works adopt a parodic approach to social and cultural material.
Kenning was winner of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Prize 2020-21, making new robotic works for the touring exhibition ‘Evolutionary Love'. Other recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Matt's Gallery (2019), Beaconsfield (2019) and Piper Keys (2018). He has shown works internationally at group exhibitions and events including, recently: The Soft Display, Paradise Works (2020); Guest, Ghost, Host: Machine, Serpentine Marathon (2017); and EXO EMO, Greene Naftali (2017). Collaborative projects include the Diagram Research Group at Flat Time House (2020), the Social Morphology Research Unit at Space Studios (2019), the Capital Drawing Group at Bergen Assembly (2019), Sick Monday at various screening venues (2018-19), and Diagram Research Use & Generation Group (DRUGG) at the ICA (2015).
He has published articles on diagram theory and practice, artistic pedagogy, ‘idiot art', and the politics of the art world and art education in journals including Third Text, Arts, Visual Culture in Britain and the Journal of Visual Art Practice.
Nat Pitt (1975) trained as an artist at Falmouth School of Art in 1997 and gained his MA from Wolverhampton University 2009 before becoming a fellow at De Appel in Amsterdam, ‘curating in the gallery field.’ Since 2013, Pitt has served as the Director for the gallery Division of Labour.
With research interests in labour and work, regional art market development, art and education and collaborative practice, projects have included artists Robert Barry, Victor Burgin, Brian O’Doherty and Carey Young. Pitt has developed an international profile for his gallery, with past presentations during the 2015 Venice Biennale, Brussels, Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Basel, Vienna and Dallas. Pitt is the current curator for A Modest Show and The Manchester Contemporary www.divisionoflabour.co.uk
Larry Achiampong's solo and collaborative projects employ film, still imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance, objects and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, gender, cross-cultural and digital identity.
With works that examine his communal and personal heritage – in particular, the intersection between Popular culture and the post-colonial position, Achiampong crate-digs the vaults of history. These investigations examine constructions of ‘the self’ by splicing the audible and visual materials of personal and interpersonal archives, offering multiple perspectives that reveal the deeply entrenched inequalities in contemporary society.
Achiampong recently shot his first feature and most ambitious film to date - Wayfinder. Set during a pandemic, the film tracks the movements of its central protagonist - The Wanderer, a young girl (played by Perside Rodrigues), on an intrepid journey across England. Travelling from North to South, The Wanderer passes through different regions, towns and landscapes, encountering people, stories and situations on her way. Presented across six chapters, including ‘The North’, ‘The Land of Smoke’ and ‘The Kingdom of the East’, this epic film builds a dialogue around the themes of class and economic exclusion, belonging and displacement, cultural heritage and the meaning of home.
Recent projects include commissions with The Line, London; The Liverpool Biennial 2021 and Art on the Underground, Roundel designs and a permanent sculptural intervention for Transport for London's Westminster Underground Station, London (2019 and 2022).
Recent solo exhibitions include Wayfinder, Turner Contemporary/MK Gallery/BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Margate, Milton Keynes, Gateshead (2022-2023); Relic Traveller: Where You and I Come From, We Know That We Are Not Here Forever, Phi Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montreal (2021); Beyond the Substrata, curated by Norman Rosenthal, Copperfield Gallery at Frieze Focus, 12 Piccadilly Arcade, London (2020); When the Sky Falls, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2020); Pan African Flag For The Relic Travellers Alliance & Relic Traveller, Phase 1, 019, Ghent (2019); Dividednation, Primary, Nottingham (2019).
(ONLINE ONLY with optional invitations to meet in London or Rotterdam)
Will is the founder of Copperfield, London and has curated more than 100 past exhibitions both at Copperfield and at public institutions and initiatives in the UK and abroad.
He has closely fostered artists like Larry Achiampong and curated shows including the likes of Lawrence Weiner. Recently Copperfield artists have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Manifesta, Domcumenta (resident) and acquired by the likes of Tate, Moma and Centre Pompidou.
(ONLINE ONLY with optional invitations to meet in London)
Claire Mander is the Director and Curator of independent curatorial practice, theCoLAB. theCoLAB collaborates with conviction and inventiveness and creates opportunities for contemporary sculptors to use unusual sites as experimental laboratories to realise their most ambitious, far-flung and life-affirming work. She recently transformed a neglected half-acre roof terrace on London’s Victoria Embankment into The Artist’s Garden, a raised platform for interventions by women artists. She has curated over 40 mainly site-specific interventions including Sculpture Shock.
residency/commissioning programme for interventions into subterranean, ambulatory and historic sites in London, Headlands to Headspace landscape art commissions across Morecambe Bay and Skulptur showcasing the work of seventeen Nordic sculptors across three sites in London. She runs Body and Place drawing residencies which take drawing out of the life room and into the landscape, historic or architectural contexts to reignite the connection between mind, eye and hand. Claire Mander sits on Westminster’s City of Sculpture panel and is a Board Member of the National Festival of Making and of the artist-led 303 Projects in Lowestoft, Suffolk. She was formerly Deputy Director of the Royal British Society of Sculptors and a Trustee and Chair of the Steering Committee of UK Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington DC). She is a member of AICA and has published two books and numerous catalogues and has given/chaired many talks about women artists and site-specific commissions including at RCA, The National Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and about Skulpturlandscap Nordland. Women sculptors, the importance of making, reinvigorating drawing, site-specific interventions She holds an MA (Distinction) from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MA in French and History of Art from Edinburgh University.