Open Frequency
Open Frequency is a curated online programme presenting new developments in contemporary art. Selected artists are nominated by key curators, writers and artists from across the UK. Recently profiled Scotland-based artists include Katy Dove, Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan, Camilla Low, Toby Paterson and Hayley Tompkins.
Open Frequency is a programme area of Axis, the arts council funded leading online resource for the contemporary art community.
Claire Barclay’s sculptural installations use craft and industrial processes, composing precious and everyday materials into poetic and menacing installations.
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Wood and steel structures function both as integral supports for the sculptures and as constituent parts of the overall composition. Within this environment, discrete sculptural objects are carefully placed, hung or propped.
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Barclay views each exhibition as a ‘pause’ in an ongoing project: objects are grouped and re-grouped from one installation to the next, refining and adding to a growing vocabulary of forms.
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Sewn leather, hand-printed fabric, machined metal and porcelain objects figure often in her work.
By combining industrially-produced materials with hand-crafted elements which have been moulded, thrown and spun, Barclay exploits the physical qualities of materials and their potential to communicate and trigger emotional and psychological responses, encouraging an engagement with her work on a profoundly instinctual level.
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'Barclay uses traditional craft materials such as wood, clay and wool in a traditional way but combines these elements to create powerful works. Often balanced around wooden or metal frames she explores the idea of ‘thinking and making’ through the construction of pots, screen printed cloth, weaving, basketry and other processes. The installations themselves move beyond the innocuous connotations of these acts and arrest the viewer with a quiet sense of unease.’ (Kirsteen Macdonald)
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Barclay examines the ‘craft’ in contemporary art and how handmade objects inform identity and lifestyle. Rather than mastering craft skills, though, Barclay is more interested in exploring the moment poised between making and unmaking – a half-finished basketwork is left to unravel, woven fabric hangs uncompleted on the loom – representing the point of merger between thinking and making. |
Foul Play
Barclay’s installation at Doggerfisher, Edinburgh (August-September 2005) continued her exploration of the organic and the synthetic, the hard edged and the sensual: ‘Seemingly incongruous materials are arranged cheek by jowl: on the ground a telescopic-like object lies prone on a crusty, partially tanned rawhide – a far cry from luxurious leather.
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A wooden structure is propped into the well of the gallery skylight, a barrel-shaped piece of aluminium stands beside a smooth oak beam. Elsewhere a brass rod has been transformed into a vague circular form, a piece of machine-turned horn at its end. |
The title 'Foul Play' itself suggests treacherous activity, but here the paraphernalia of violence is impotent, though an air of anticipation still hangs heavy.’ (Doggerfisher, Edinburgh, 2005).
British Art Show 6
Barclay is currently showing in the British Art Show 6 in Manchester. Her installation features a turned metal pole in a crocheted sleeve, three large metal hoops encased in tightly-sewn leather sleeves and a beak-like form which has been cast in steel.
‘Barclay’s composed environments take their cue from the space in which they locate themselves. According to the artist, ‘the logistics of the space start to suggest ways of organising something within it.’ Often likened to three-dimensional drawings in space, where each pole, plank and rope represents a carefully placed line drawn between the floor, the ceiling and the walls, her sculptural environments are held together by their own tension.’ (Emma Mahoney, British Art Show 6, Hayward Gallery, London, 2005.)
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Biography
Claire Barclay (b. 1968, Paisley, Scotland) has exhibited throughout Europe and Australia. Recent exhibitions include Silver Gilt, her debut London solo show at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and Foul Play, Doggerfisher, Edinburgh (2005). Other exhibitions include Half-light, Art Now, Tate Britain (2004), Ideal Pursuits, Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2003, Zenomap, Venice Biennale; This was tomorrow, New Art Centre, Salisbury (2003) and Early One Morning, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2002).
Claire lives and works in Glasgow and is represented by Doggerfisher, Edinburgh and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. | |