Hannah Cooper
b. 1981, Sydney, Australia
Lives and works on Gundungurra Country, Bundanoon, Southern Highlands, NSW

Hannah Cooper uses traditional cloth-making techniques to produce woven paintings. Production of “ordinary” domestic textiles has heavily influenced Hannah’s artistic work, which plays with (and pushes against) the formal language of geometric abstraction and the structural and creative constraints of weaving. An over-under grid is the basis of all weaving - Hannah’s work is rooted in the ability to emphasise or distort that very simple structure: to stay firmly on the grid or move off it. 

Hannah is a self-taught weaver, teaching herself basic techniques on a rigid heddle loom in 2017 and concentrating on simple plain weave blankets made from locally-sourced superfine merino wool. She now weaves on a 12-shaft countermarch floor loom, utilising more complex structures but maintaining a focus on using ethically-sourced fibres. Hannah naturally-dyes thread with plants and animals (leaves, barks, roots, flowers and insects) for use in her artworks.

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