Eileen Cooper RA (b.1953, Derbyshire) is known as a painter and printmaker but her work encompasses works on paper, collage, ceramics, and sculpture. She obtained her Master of Arts degree in Printmaking at Royal College of Art in 1977 after completing her BA degree at Goldsmith’s College in 1974. Throughout her career Cooper’s work has contained a strong autobiographical element, yet allegorical and poetic. The concerns and experiences that she depicts are timeless and of universal relevance. A strong colourist and described as a magic realist, Cooper brings an unapologetically female perspective to her subject matter, encompassing sexuality, motherhood, life and death. Her images, simultaneously bold and tender, reveal a range of feeling that is both deeply engrossing and readily accessible, yet very much part of contemporary art practice.
Solo exhibitions include Eyes Wide Open, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Wandsworth, London, UK (2024); Ambivalence and Desire, Huxley Parlour Gallery, London, UK (2023); Radium Dreams, The Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge (2023); Parallel Lines, Leicester Museum & Art Gallery, Leicester, UK (2022); Nights at the Circus, Sims Reed Gallery, London, UK (2021); Personal Space: New Paintings, Huxley Parlour Gallery, London, UK (2019); Hide and Seek: Drawing 1977-2014, touring to Swindon Museum, and Art Gallery, The Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, UK (2016-17); Hide and Seek, Drawing 1977-2014, Royal Academy of Arts, Tennant Gallery and Fine Rooms Garden, Wiltshire, UK (2015); Collages, Royal Academy, London, UK (2010); Raw Material: Eileen Cooper at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK (2000); Second Skin: Eileen Cooper in the 80s and 90s, touring to Wolverhampton, Nottingham and Eastbourne, UK (1999); Touring Exhibition – Graphic Work, Darlington, Harrogate & Scarborough, UK (1996-97); Eileen Cooper at Sadlers Wells Theatre, London, UK (1994).
Group exhibitions include The Women's Art Collection: Conversation Not Spectacle, The Women's Art Collection, University of Cambridge, UK (2024-2025); As She Is, curated by Rejina Pyo, Soho Revue, London, UK (2024); Mirror, Mirror, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2024); Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition, Arnolfini Bristol; traveling to MAC Birmingham; Millennium Gallery Sheffield; Dundee Contemporary Arts (2024 through 2025); Contested Bodies, Leeds University Galleries, Leeds (2023); Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990, Tate Britain, traveling to National Galleries of Scotland: Modern, Edinburgh; The Whitworth, University of Manchester (2023 through 2025); Women and Water, Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge (2023); Towner 100: The Living Collection, Towner Eastbourne (2023); A Living Collection, Hepworth Wakefield (2023); Group Show, Aspex Portsmouth (2023); A Spirit Inside, The Lightbox, Woking; traveled to Compton Verney, Warwickshire (2023 through 2024); Act 1: Body en Thrall with the Rugby Collection, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum (2022); Hockney to Himid: 60 years of British Printmaking, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2021); RA Portfolio Diamond Jubilee Gift, Queens Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, UK (2013-14); Hugh Stoneman – Master Printer, Tate St. Ives, Cornwall, UK (2008);Visual Wit, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2004); The Contemporary Print Show Part I, The Barbican Centre, London, UK (1998); Contemporary Art at the Courtauld, Courtauld Institute, London, UK (1993); Innocence and Experience, touring exhibition organised by the South Bank Centre & Manchester City Art Gallery: Manchester, Hull, Nottingham, & Glasgow, UK (1992); Look Here Upon This Picture and On This, South Bank Centre, touring exhibition (1991-92); Postmodern Prints, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (1991); Picturing People, British Council tour to Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong & Singapore (1989); Women’s Images of Men, ICA, London, UK (1980).
Highlights & Collections
Elected a Royal Academician in 2001, Eileen Cooper served as Keeper of the Royal Academy from 2010-17, becoming the first woman to be elected to the role since the RA began in 1768. In 2017 and 2009 she was nominated as coordinator of the Royal Academy Summer Show. Her work can be found in prominent public and private collections including Arts Council Collection (UK); Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery (UK); Bristol Museum & Art Gallery (UK); British Council (UK); British Museum (UK); Dallas Museum of Art (USA); Government Art Collection, DCMS (UK); Imperial College, London (UK); Kunsthalle, Nuremberg (Germany); Manchester Art Galleries (UK); Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate (UK); MIMA, Middlesborough (UK); The Women's Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge (UK); Newport Art Gallery (UK); Open University, Milton Keynes Otter Gallery (UK); Pallant House (UK): The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent (UK); Royal Academy of Arts (UK); Royal Collection (UK); Ruth Borchard Collection (UK); Swindon Art Gallery (UK); The Hepworth Wakefield (UK); The Jerwood Collection (UK); The Tate Gallery (UK); Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (UK); University of Warwick Art Collection (UK); Victoria & Albert Museum, London (UK); Walpole Library, Yale University (USA); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (UK); Wolverhampton Art Gallery (UK).