CAROLINE COON: IN THE ARENA

Caroline Coon reshapes the world in her image. It’s what she’s always done.

As a hippie in 1960s London, she rebelled – hard – founding a charity to fight for young people arrested on drug offences. In the 1970s she managed The Clash and documented the birth of punk in Melody Maker, defining the voice of a generation, all the while berating them for any slights of misogyny or bigotry. Whatever system she found herself in, she kicked against it, over and over again, until it better fit her world view.

And the whole time - quietly, secretly - she painted. Now, her work is finally finding the audience it has always deserved, and we're incredibly lucky to be hosting the first exhibition of her ongoing 'Arena' series. These paintings, made between 1989 and 2020, celebrate the fierce beauty of competitive sport, with football at its core.

Football has been a part of Caroline's life for decades. She's been going to Loftus Road to watch her beloved Queens Park Rangers since the 1960s, she's written articles on footballers’ wives and young hooligans. She's not a fetishistic observer of the game, she's a true fan, and you can see that in these bold, kaleidoscopic paintings. These are works about the body, about gender and fluidity, passion and anger, sex and skill. They're a perfect distillation of everything that makes Caroline's art so special.

Caroline Coon: In the Arena presented by OOF at J HAMMOND PROJECTS, London 10 December 2020 - 6 February 2021