painter, born Mildura, Victoria, to Italian parents. Coppola studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction at La Trobe University in Victoria, completing her Honours component at the University of Tasmania, where she then attained a Master of Fine Arts in 1995.
Coppola’s father and mother migrated to Australia from Italy in 1955 and 1961. They met and married in Australia, where Coppola and her sister where born. This split cultural heritage had a profound impact on Coppola, finding herself belonging at once to both cultures and wholly to none. Cultural heritage and the investigation of belonging are overarching themes in Coppola’s work, represented by studies of the relationship between the object, its placement, and its existence in the world. Coppola’s work explores the intersection of her dichotomous cultures, their convergence and divergence, merging and separation. Through this investigation Coppola has come to understand her two cultures as interdependent, each unable to exist without the other.
In recent work, Coppola interprets light and shadow to represent a physical mapping of migratory movement across the globe. Photographically documenting shadows to record her own experiences, she juxtaposes these with images that represent her parents’ migration from Italy to Australia. The photographs are reinterpreted and layered in drawings to allow several different experiences and locations to coexist in the same moment, forging new relationships between cultures, past and present.
Coppola has been included in The Robert Jacks Drawing Award, The City of Banyule Drawing Award and The Hutchins Drawing Prize where she was awarded a Judges Selection in 2001. In 2010 she was selected for the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award. Coppola has been the recipient of several awards and residencies including the Vermont Studio Centre Residency and Part Fellowship, Vermont, USA in 2004, Ian Potter Foundation Individual Grant in 2001, Arts Tasmania Development Grant in 1999 and The Rosamond McCulloch Scholarship to the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris in 1997. Her work is represented in many public collections including Artbank, Print Council of Australia, University of Tasmania, Launceston and Hobart, Mornington Peninsula Gallery, The Hutchins School, Hobart, Banyule City Council and the Devonport Art Gallery.
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