Christopher Cook shortlisted for the Sunny Art Prize 2019

Christopher’s graphite images are made on coated paper and are based on 17th century Dutch still-life painting, a preoccupation of his that began with straightforward transpositions of iconic works, but which became a sustained imaginative inquiry. A clear intention of the Dutch genre is to display wealth and power, colonialist expansionism, and beauty, and the more the artist looked, the more this contradiction came to reflect a ‘coming of age’ of capitalism and materialism. This recognition prompted him to consider contemporary implications of the genre by disrupting the beauty of the various tableaux through the addition of anachronistic elements that suggested modern-day exploitation, conflict, and protectionism.

Check his shortlisted works, The Thief, Skirmish, Shadowy and DMZ Still Life,in the Shortlisted Artists section below.