The Thousands

With more than 1000 works in this show, Jim Cooper is evidently blessed with a pretty extensive (concept of) family. His ceramic Family Portraits recreate TV characters, pineapples, ducks and Jesus (just to name a few), in a slightly wonky grinning style. Super-bright coloured glazes drool into one another in a vaguely psychedelic way, over totemically proportioned figures and objects invested with a sense of vegetable sentience. All jumbled in together, the works are installed like offerings at a monument, but really are commemmorating their co-existence. Seeing so much all at once is testament both to Cooper’s mastery of the medium and to its often overlooked possibilities.

Maybe it’s the useful domestic object heritage of ceramics? Or the vibe of it being the self-exploratory craft of middle-aged ladies who wear too many scarves and have spiritual feelings? But if Fine Arts were a high school movie then ceramics would probably sit on its own at lunchtime – until eventually it took off its glasses and looked bangin’ at prom. Just like Rachel Leigh Cook was actually totally a babe even before getting a makeover from a teeny-tiny super-sassy Anna Pacquin (seriously check out the cast list for She’s All That; it’s nuts), ceramics as instanced here does not need your “dork outreach program.”