Clare Martin, Duration 360: Red Shift, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.
Clare Martin
Gallery 3
Friday 26 January - Sunday 18 February 2024
Opening Thursday 25 January 2024, 6-8pm
Glyph, an exhibition by Clare Martin, is focused on purposeful marks and the combination of image and text, and falls loosely into three sections. The first is based on symbols and numbers, the second is about mark-making and time, and the third is on zines that combine image and text. Text always retains a graphic presence, many symbols hover between representation and text, and an image can be described but not reduced to words; Clare’s aim is to work in the region where they overlap.
Symbols can be described quite literally (“This is a boat”) and yet can carry a load of other stories and meanings. Clare has made these symbols out of reflective wire where they are generalised and enduring, and used natural materials for those that are perishable, such as the ‘self’. “I was inspired by ancient petroglyphs or geoglyphs which seem to capture enduring, recurring symbols.”
In the second part she follows a practice of making marks by a particular kind of action, such as dots or pushing the pencil away from her, and continues making the action for a length of time. She tries not to engage in visual representation, but emotional states come through and text may be included. The resulting abstract drawings represent a duration as much as anything.
Clare’s zines deal with a variety of topics, selected for the way they combine image and text. Some are an ekphrastic document/object consisting of text and images that comment on or describe another artwork. An object provokes a poem that prompts a drawing, and so on. Some are about Time, or recurring patterns in nature. As befits the zine vibe, a master copy will be presented on the wall, and the zine will also be available as low cost photocopied limited editions.
