Paul Cooper is trained in the visual arts (Fine Arts), art history and visual cultural theory with a specialization in sculpture and three-dimensional studies. He holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the Department of Fine arts and the Department of History of Art at the University of the Witwatersrand and a Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education from the University of Pretoria. As Head of Subject: Critical Studies he is tasked with coordinating and teaching an undergraduate and post graduate learning programme in critical studies and visual culture. In addition to this he exhibits his own work widely and is working towards a solo exhibition. Recently he undertook to develop a proposal towards PhD study in which he directs a research focus into an investigation around the purpose and function of public art in the context of a phantasmagorical urban landscape in which spatial, social and cultural trajectories give form to emerging visual arts interventions. He positions his thoughts at the intersection of a discursive trans-disciplinary context which calls for a revision of what we understand to be site-specific public art. These contentions are discussed as they play out in site-specific sculptural interventions that are in turn brought to bear through the ever transforming spaces of the urban inner city of Johannesburg, South Africa.