Eye, the Witness concludes Charlotte Cooper’s year-long residency at Hogarth’s House, the long-term family home of the painter, engraver and satirist William Hogarth. Cooper responds to the history of the building and its former inhabitants with a body of work that explores the complex relational bonds between humans and their environment over time.
Eye, the Witness ties in with the artist's critical inquiry into the dynamic relationship between art and psychoanalysis. Placing a particular focus on female narratives and interpretations, the exhibition title echoes the joint process of 'co-creation' as identified by the psychoanalyst and feminist theorist Bracha L. Ettinger. Based on the notion that subjectivity is formed in relation to each other, rather than in isolation, the “eye” becomes both a perceptual witness and a poetic doubling of the self, shaped through encounter with the other.
Applying a contemporary approach to traditional printmaking techniques, Charlotte Cooper's delicate installations reveal the psychological work of damage and repair - as each human link carries with it a vestige of all others that came before, and holds the possibility of the infinite links yet to come.