William Cobbing
Title
Senior Lecturer BA Drawing
College
University of the Arts London
Email address
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Researcher Research
Biography
Since 2000 Cobbing has exhibited internationally, in group shows including A Secret History of Clay Tate Liverpool (2004), Room with a View Gemeente Museum, The Hague (2006), Drifting Clouds Furini Arte Contemporanea, Italy (2007), and solo exhibitions at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam (2002) and Netwerk Centre for Contemporary Art, Belgium (2007.)He was awarded the ACE Helen Chadwick Fellowship in 2005/6 at Ruskin School and British School at Rome, resulting in the Gradiva Project at Freud Museum and Camden Arts Centre in 2007/8. In 2009 and 2010 Cobbing had residencies at Turquoise Mountain in Kabul, Afghanistan, the artworks from which were exhibited in Cobbing’s solo exhibition Man in Planet at Viafarini DOCVA in Milan (2010.)
In 2012 Cobbing exhibited in Revolver at Matt’s Gallery and curated The Stone of Folly at Down Stairs in Hereford. Exhibitions in 2013 include The Big Bamboozle at Camden Arts Centre, Drawing Biennial at the Drawing Room, Peckham PAMI, and Corridor Plateau at Northern Charter, Newcastle.
Cobbing co-curated (with Rosie Cooper) a series of exhibitions and events about concrete poet Bob Cobbing, starting with the exhibition ABC in Sound at ERC Liverpool. He exhibited a new series of works made during the Lipman residency at Hatton Gallery and mima in 2014.
Starting from a sculptural sensibility William Cobbing’s art practice encompasses a diverse range of media, including video, photography and installation. Performative encounters are devised with material, such as clay, in which the protagonists’ are engaged in a repetitive and absurd cycle of manipulating formless surfaces. The works allude to concepts of entropy, underlining the extent to which earthly material is irreversibly dispersed, giving rise to a definitive blurring of the boundaries between the body and landscape, whilst putting the possibility of conclusion on hold.