Will Cooke: Safe As Houses

Moving towards the light, 2024 Primer, acrylic on aluminium, lacquered clear coat, powdercoated aluminium frame 121.6 x 101.6cm

Sydney-based artist Will Cooke, known for his boldly reductive and geometric works, presents a new suite of paintings exploring the link between architecture and the natural world. For this exhibition, Safe As Houses, Cooke takes his starting point from the work of Japanese architect Tadao Ando, and his poetic use of light and space. By partitioning reflected light from swathes of finely atomised colour, Cooke borrows from Ando’s philosophy of duality; solid/void, light/dark, stark/serene. The works act as inverted studies of the sun as it oscillates throughout the day, performing as our overarching light source, both literally and figuratively.