Cooper Gallery

Cooper Gallery at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee is internationally recognised as a distinctive platform in Scotland for its radical curatorial research, international approach and focus on critical discourse in contemporary art and culture.

Cooper Gallery’s experimental and transdisciplinary approach to programming utilises exhibition-making as a collaborative process of knowledge exchange and production. At the heart of this dialogue is a sustained critical engagement, between multiple contexts, practices and discourses, which navigates the efficacy and necessity of equality, diversity and inclusion. This is exemplified in the gallery’s highly regarded public programme of 12 Hour symposia: 12 Hour Jamming Symposium (2014), 12 Hour Action Group (2016) and 12 Hour Non-State Parade (2019).

Inherently transdisciplinary Cooper Gallery operates an integrated programme that transforms exhibitions into models of creative and critical enquiry supportive of artistic production and audience engagement. Encompassing new commissions, exhibitions, off-site projects, public engagement events, artists’ and writers’ residencies and publishing, Cooper Gallery’s curatorial approach grounded in discursive, experimental and participatory strategies, sustains an environment for significant and emerging artists to conceive and produce risk-taking ambitious projects. This had included amongst others:

• Suzanne Lacy (2025)
• Grace Ndiritu, Saodat Ismailova, and Margaret Tait (2024)
• Harun Farocki (2023)
• Heather Phillipson (2023)
• The Otolith Group (2023)
• Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer (2022)
• Ruth Ewan (2021)
• The Ignorant Art School (2021 – ongoing)
• Laura Mulvey & Peter Wollen (2017 & 2020)
• Georgina Starr (2013 & 2020)
• Jasmina Cibic (2019)
• Phil Collins (2019)
• Ingela Ihrman (2018)
• Bow Gamelan Ensemble (2018)
• Paul Noble (2011 & 2018)
• Ulay (2017)
• Jade Montserrat (2017)
• Bruce McLean (2011, 2013, 2017)
• He Changyao (2017)
• Cullinan Richards (2010 & 2016)
• Liam Gillick & Anton Vidokle (2016)
• Naiza Khan (2014)
• Kathrin Sonntag (2014)

Through expanding exhibitions into a discursive public realm, Cooper Gallery explores the full breadth of the creative, social and educational impacts of contemporary arts practice.

Image credits

• Background image: Paul Noble, Tent, 2011. Courtesy the artist.
• About box: Paul Noble, Politics of Small Places, 2018. Installation at Cooper Gallery. Photo by Tom Nolan.