Starting from a sculptural sensibility William Cobbing’s art practice encompasses a diverse range of media, including video, photography and installation. Performative encounters are devised with material, such as clay, in which the protagonists’ are engaged in a repetitive and absurd cycle of manipulating formless surfaces. The works allude to concepts of entropy, underlining the extent to which earthly material is irreversibly dispersed, giving rise to a definitive blurring of the boundaries between the body and landscape, whilst putting the possibility of conclusion on hold.
William Cobbing studied sculpture at Central St Martins, De Ateliers, an artists’ institute in Amsterdam and a PhD at Middlesex University. Cobbing also undertook a residency at Turquoise Mountain in Kabul, Afghanistan . He was awarded the Helen Chadwick Fellowship at Ruskin School and British School at Rome, resulting in the Gradiva Project at Freud Museum and Camden Arts Centre. William Cobbing has exhibited internationally including Human After All: Ceramic Reflections in Contemporary Art, The Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics, The Netherlands; Haptic Loop, Cooke Latham Gallery; Feÿ Arts Festival, Château du Feÿ, Bourgogne, France; CLAY! / LER! Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, Denmark, Material Gestures, E-WERK Freiburg, Concrete Poetries, LOWER.GREEN, Norwich, Further Thoughts on Earthy Materials, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen and Kunsthaus Hamburg, Terrapolis, French School,Athens (Organised by Whitechapel Gallery and NEON, To Continue / Notes Towards a Sculpture Cycle NOMAS Foundation, Rome and What’s Love Got To Do With It at Hayward Gallery Project Space, London.