About
Memory is fundamental within the making of my work. Memory is recorded through the senses and reconfigured through the process of making. Memory of family, everyday rituals, of engaging with the world physically, intellectually, and emotionally; these are all instrumental building blocks which inform my artistic practice. My work develops in series. One series of work can inform the making of another; creating a continuous stream of artistic production.
I work in steel, a material which is both versatile and flexible. As memory underpins and informs my working practice, the material of steel, forged through the process of heat, also has memory. Even though steel is seen as a hard-tensile material it can, when heated, be bent to the required expression of the maker, it can look soft, organic and mailable. Cut with a cutting disc it can bare the memory of scar or mark, welded together it embraces the drawing of dash, dot and seam.
I have used found objects within my work. Some forms have remained intact, whilst others have been reconstructed; taking on a new identity and meaning. Developing a diverse artistic language has been informed by a need to express the nuances of life through an engagement with material and colour, but also through the study of art.
‘Clarke’s work draws upon such traditional sources for modernist constructed sculpture in steel as African carvings and the forms of industry and architecture, as well as Asian devotional statues, filtering them – slightly improbably –through a wholly contemporary feminist sensibility to make works that are notably original and compelling. Her sculptures conflate overtones of weapons, machines, sinister vegetation, the female body, landscape forms, and more. Clarke explores subtle issues of symmetry and asymmetry, likeness and unlikeness, to make structures that are always surprising.
Her sculptures look like nothing but themselves but provoke complex associations, enriched by the fact that nothing is ever quite what we assume, at first viewing, there is always something unexpected to discover: small scale incidents that act as counterpoint to larger elements, shifts away from symmetry or repetition, warpings of regularity, and so on. Clarke also tests the possibilities of polychromy, further enriching her already expressive forms.’
Karen Wilkin. Curator and critic. NYC.