BIOGRAPHY

Nicole Coson (b. 1992, Manila, lives and works in the UK) completed her Bachelors in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, graduating with First Class Honours in 2014. Currently, she is completing her masters degree in Painting at the Royal College of Art in the UK.  Coson works on a variety of media with a focus on analogue printmaking techniques. Her first solo show in Manila titled “Spirit Captures” took place in West Gallery in 2013.

Coson’s work revolves around the analogy of the ghost: a loose and phantom form that, though beyond our grasp, invades our tactile and physical world. The suggestion of movement—or rather, of momentum— is integral to her work. The singular impression of the monotype printmaking process captures the blur of fleeting signals in stasis, leaving behind a flurry of figures that appear almost recognisably and residually organic. In her work, she seeks the contemplation of something caught mid-flight, captured for a brief moment in time when these forms become strangely perceptible but whose physical make-up and origin are impenetrable.

Coson’s more recent work explores economies of visibility and disappearance utilising the theme of camouflage as a tool to blend, clone, adapt and conquer. She delves into the idea of the subjugation of nature and the human yearn for control even in defiance of the survival mechanisms intrinsic to organic material. The repetitive pattern of camouflage reflect our violent propensity to diminish individuality and take something unique and rendering, compressing, dismembering or synthesising it.