The Glasgow School of Art

Professorial lecture: Thomas Joshua Cooper

Thursday 5 November 2015, 6pm
Reid Auditorium, Reid Building, The Glasgow School of Art, 164 Renfrew Street, Glasgow, G3 6RF

Unfinished Business

History lessons, homework and some high hopes. Teaching in Art School and making work - an Artist's talk by Thomas Joshua Cooper.

Prof Thomas Joshua Cooper will deliver a professorial lecture in the series of GSA Public Lectures. The lecture will be divided into five sections: The first brief section will acknowledge the history of Professorships at the GSA, their purpose and importance. The second section will briefly remark on the importance and value of the specialist studio system in Fine Art Education at GSA. The third section will focus on inspirational work from other artists that have helped him to become the picture-maker that he is today. Following that he will discuss his two newest projects: Scattered Waters, 30 years of Scottish River Pictures (2014) and Wandering Home – Following the Celtic Peregrinati (2015). The final section will review The Atlas of Emptiness and Extremity, a project that he has spent the last 25 years, starting in 1990, originating and trying to complete.

The lecture will be followed by a Q&A hosted by Prof Tom Inns, Director of The Glasgow School of Art

Image credit:

Looking towards Scotland
Failure and annihilation – Darien and Caledonia
Bahía Escocesa

Puerto Escocés
San Blas Tribal Territory,
Panama, Central America

2007/2015

“Caledonia” was the site of the “disaster of Darien scheme”, Scotland’s only attempt at New World colonization. The colony at Darien failed and was lost in 1700. As a result the country of Scotland lost over one quarter of its total GDP and nearly went bankrupt. One of the several dire consequences of this fact was to lead Scotland to have to agree to a formal union with England, in the Act of Union of 1707. It has been suggested that the failure of Caledonia may have marked the “beginning of the end” of all forced European Colonization.