Working from her studio in Bundanoon NSW, Hannah Cooper uses traditional cloth-making techniques to produce domestic textiles, which she believes are deeply under-valued in our daily lives. Hannah sells her domestic textile work under the label Sunday Woven.

Production of “ordinary” domestic textiles has influenced Hannah’s artistic weaving, which plays with (and resists) the formal language of geometric abstraction and the structural and creative constraints of weaving. An over-under grid is the basis of all weaving - Hannah’s work is rooted in the ability to emphasise or distort that very simple structure: to stay firmly on the grid or move off it.

Hannah is a self-taught weaver, teaching herself basic techniques on a rigid heddle loom in 2017 and initially concentrating on simple plain weave blankets made from local superfine merino wool. She now weaves on a 12-shaft countermarch floor loom, utilising more complex structures but maintaining a focus on analogue weaving using ethically-sourced fibres.

Hannah naturally-dyes thread with plants and insects (leaves, barks, roots, flowers and insects) for use in her artworks and teaches natural dyeing through workshops and to school groups.

Hannah is represented in NSW by Jennings Kerr.

Awards:

• Finalist Hadley’s Art Prize 2023

• Finalist Glover Prize 2023

• Highly Commended (Nick Waterlow OAM Award) Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize 2022

• Finalist Seed Stitch Contemporary Textiles Award 2022

• Finalist Little Things Art Prize 2022

• Finalist The Alice Prize 2022

• Finalist Little Things Art Prize 2021

• Finalist Corner Store Mini Series Art Prize 2021

• Finalist Meroogal Women’s Art Prize 2020

• Finalist Kangaroo Valley Arts Prize 2020

Significant collections:

• Macquarie Group collection

• The Darling, Sydney (10 pieces in the penthouses and suites)

Solo shows:

• (Upcoming) ‘Warping the weft’, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, June-July 2024

• ‘Slow pixels’, Jennings Kerr Gallery, Robertson, opening 13 January 2024

Selected group shows:

• ‘Let the sunshine in’, Five Walls, Melbourne, 2 - 24 February 2024

• ‘Threads’, Jennings Kerr Gallery, Robertson, 17 November - 17 December 2023

• ‘Material Matters: materials and context’, Australian Design Centre, Sydney, 30 March - 24 May 2023

• ‘Seed Stitch Contemporary Textiles’, Tamworth Regional Gallery, 3 December - 29 January 2023

• Summer Salon, Jennings Kerr Robertson, 4 - 18 December 2022

• ‘Seed Stitch Contemporary Textiles’, Australian Design Centre Sydney, 7 October - 16 November 2022

• ‘Woven in Nature’, Saywell Gallery, Sydney, June 2022

Professional organisations:

• Complex Weavers (International)

• National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA)