The Glasgow School of Art

Prof Thomas Joshua Cooper, GSA

I am a long-term practicing artist, whose primary interests revolve around issues of the landscape, historical and cultural geography, cartography and the problems of picture-making. Making photographic work is important and central both to my work and research. During the last 23 years, I am involved in the making and assembly of a large, thematic body of work, that is developed out of the physical act of visually and pictorially mapping the cardinal extremes immense described as the Atlantic Basin.

Convocation project

Over an eleven day period, GSA’s Head of Fine Art Photography Thomas Joshua Cooper travelled to Skye, Raasay, Cumbria and Northern Ireland, covering a total of 3135 miles.

He worked on two photographic bodies of work. For the first, he travelled to photograph the birthplaces of Saint Patrick, St Brendan and St Columba.

For his second series, he went to the very edges of land, visiting the cardinal points of Northern Ireland including Benbane Head, County Antrim, the north-west point and then onto the east-most point at Burr Point on the Ards Peninsula. In particular, with the latter location, he focused on the view from Ireland across the water to Scotland, aiming to echo St Columba’s last view from Ireland, before his exile to Scotland.

Thomas Joshua Cooper talks about his project for Convocation: Colm Cille's Spiral from The Glasgow School of Art on Vimeo.