Dunedin artist Jim Cooper’s colourful exhibition, The Cellophane Circus Visits the Royal Suite, is in Gore.

Cooper's colourful, figurative ceramics will be at the Eastern Southland Gallery until November 27.

“This is one exhibition you will not want to miss. Children and adults alike will be delighted and entranced by Cooper’s quirky and colourful creations,” gallery programmes officer Marcella Geddes said.

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Cooper is known for pushing boundaries and taking clay to its absolute limits.

The Otago Polytechnic School of Art graduate has a fresh and dynamic approach to his chosen medium, with his installations disguising the challenges and technical finesse required for their construction, she said. 

His ceramic works often take the shape of figures, animals or plants, are always colourfully glazed and grouped to form unique sculptural installations.

Cooper completed his undergraduate studies in ceramics in 1989 and later returned to complete his masters degree, before spending time teaching at the School of Art in Dunedin.

He now dedicates himself full time to his ceramics and has exhibited extensively in public and private institutions around New Zealand and Australia. 

Cooper has won numerous awards and residencies, including the Supreme Award winner of the Norsewear Art Award in 2006

and the Premier Award at the prestigious Portage Ceramic Awards in 2009 and 2012. 

His international residency awards include the Yingge International Ceramics Museum and Gallery Taiwan (2009-2010) and Gudagergaard International Ceramics Research Centre, Skaelskor, Denmark (2016-2017). 

It was while in Denmark that Cooper’s work took a change in direction thanks to the leftover products of a pottery class stacked on top of each other in the corner of a studio. 

Once home in New Zealand he began to experiment by creating balls and shapes of different sizes and textures and then glazing them.

More recently he has begun introducing new materials into his work, such as papier mache, re-cycled fabric and other found materials.

The Cellophane Circus Visits the Royal Suite is a selection of works made over the past four years in his Port Chalmers studio.