Violet Cooper 2026 Exhibition

Opening Night Friday 13 February 6-8pm

Violet Cooper is a ceramic artist with a background in illustration, public art, mosaics, and community art projects. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Communication and has worked across exhibitions and commissions, with occasional teaching jobs and a side hustle in professional cookery.
Drawing on social observation, her playful, characterful ceramics are marked by humour, embracing the imperfections of the handmade in all their glorious wonkiness.

Artist Statement

Working from my tiny shed in the Adelaide Hills, accompanied by chirpy birds and the occasional grunting koala, I like to push the limits of ceramics through assorted hand-building techniques, glazes and all different clay bodies. New ideas drive my process and the work evolves intuitively… if something feels risky or ridiculous, I’ll probably give it a go.  

The resulting vessels are detailed and colourful, irreverent, sometimes funny, sometimes perverse… featuring pattern, text, wildly decorative handles and anthropomorphic elements, like legs. Lots of legs. While I usually aim for functionality, the forms tend to develop individual personalities of their own, becoming characters in their own right.

Ideas arrive faster than I can make them, so I avoid repetition. Each object carries something with it: an observation, a joke, a song stuck on repeat, or a feeling I can’t quite put into words. I like to leave space for interpretation, and when a piece makes someone smile, feel a little less alone, or they see something in it that I never intended, I am thrilled and feel I’ve achieved what I set out to do.