Tagged: sculpture
Soft Science City in Cities Foretold
Soft Science City will feature in the group show Cities Foretold.
Soft Science City highlights the fact that the metropolis is always in flux; it’s a work-in-progress, a kind of dynamic experiment in coexistence. In Soft Science City cold rational laboratory glass meets warm soft knitting. And here, these opposites not only attract, they are inextricably linked. Working together they form a mini-metropolis in which fuzzy logic is made manifest. In other words, there are no precise solutions offered by this experiment, no single right answer. But it does point out that diversity and inclusion are key factors in creating a thriving city.
Cities Foretold
1 Sept – 2 Oct
Art Space on the Concourse
Chatswood, NSW
Metropolis Experiment
Tracey Clement, ‘Metropolis Experiment,’ 2016-17, rusty steel, salt, laboratory glass, cotton, dimensions variable (max height 200cm). Photo T. Clement.
Metropolis Experiment, 2-17 June 2017 at AirSpace Projects, Marrickville.
Metropolis Experiment is part architectural model, part mad science: the whole city is a laboratory. But instead of shiny stainless and gleaming glassware in sterile white surrounds, we are presented with rusty tripods and salt crystals that creep up and over everything, corroding as they go. In Metropolis Experiment something has gone horribly wrong: it’s a ruined model city, a metaphor.
Metropolis Experiment is my third recent body of work which responds to the vivid prognostications of JG Ballard’s 1962 post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, The Drowned World. View the first here and the second here.
What links these works is the image of the ruined city, an image Ballard conjured so evocatively in The Drowned World.
Tracey Clement, ‘Metropolis Experiment,’ 2016-17, rusty steel, salt, laboratory glass, cotton, dimensions variable (max height 200cm). Photo T. Clement.
Thanks to its scale, Metropolis Experiment draws on the conceptual qualities of architectural models (as well as ruins) in order to make a point. As theorists are fond of pointing out, all ruins simultaneously embody both the present and the past.
Meanwhile, architectural models are inherently aspirational. They embody potential, physically manifested, but not quite realised. They represent the future. As a ruined model city (a combination of both) my artwork adds a third temporal stream: the future already devastated.
Metropolis Experiment is a premonition, a warning.
Metropolis Experiment II
Tracey Clement, ‘Metropolis Experiment II,’ 2016, laboratory glass, salt, rust, dimensions variable (max height 100cm).
Metropolis Experiment II is actually part of a larger work, Metropolis Experiment, which will be shown at AirSpace Projects 2-17 June 2017.
This sculpture is the unholy love child of an architectural model and a chemistry trial gone horribly wrong: it’s a ruined model city, a metaphor.
Metropolis Experiment is part of my third recent body of work in my Mapping The Drowned World project which responds to the vivid prognostications of JG Ballard’s 1962 post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, The Drowned World.
It is also my third model city. The previous two are: Post-Premonitionism 2 and Plastic City.
Mapping The Drowned World installation
Tracey Clement with Post-Premonitionism 2 in Mapping The Drowned World, October 2015.
Installation shots from Mapping The Drowned World. Six artists responded to JG Ballard’s novel, The Drowned World
Exhibiting artists: Roy Ananda, Jon Cattapan, Tracey Clement, Kate Mitchell, Janet Tavener and Gosia Wlodarczak
Mapping The Drowned World
Coordinated by Tracey Clement
8-31 October 2015
SCA Galleries
READ the ‘Mapping The Drowned World’ catalogue on ISSUU.
Plastic City Videos
Plastic City was constructed in the gallery over 7 days.
Watch the whole project from beginning to end in these time-lapse videos.
Plastic City
Tracey Clement, concept drawing for ‘Plastic City’, 2010.
Big isn’t always better
Plastic City represents the annual consumption of one individual. The miniature buildings are made from every plastic container I bought during 2010; they were stored instead of recycled.
Tracey Clement, ‘Plastic City’ (detail), 2012, plastic containers used in 12 months, dimensions variable.
The vaguely sci-fi style of the mini city’s ‘architecture’ is an invitation to think about the future. Plastic City embodies a number of timely questions about the types of cities we want to live in, sustainable practice in urban environments and personal responsibility.
Visitors should leave asking themselves, “How big would my Plastic City be?” In this case, bigger isn’t better.
Plastic City highlights the fact that recycling is not enough. We need to choose items that aren’t heavily packaged. We need to use less and re-use, not just recycle.
Tracey Clement
2012
Plastic City was constructed on site over a week at Articulate Project Space, June 19-24, 2012.
The public were invited to visit during the making process and helped to ‘recycle’ the work at the closing event.
1+1=1
1 man + 1 woman = 1 child (me).
1+1=1 is an acknowledgment of the contribution my parents made to my character and artistic practice.
The starting point of this solo exhibition is series of drawing collaborations I made with my Father when I was a child: he drew, I scribbled with crayons.
In 1+1+=1, I have taken these drawings and reinterpreted them in embroideries (one of the several traditional “women’s work” skills handed down to me by my Mother) and digital prints.
I have also animated three of the drawings using very simple techniques including the construction of handmade flip-books and praxinoscopes.
Watch videos of the praxinoscopes here.
Tracey Clement:
2011
1+1=1 was a solo exhibition at James Dorahy Project Space, Sydney.
Photos: Embroideries photographed by Richard Glover. Flip-books, praxinoscopes and installation shots by Tracey Clement.
1+1=1 Videos
The praxinoscope is a 19th century animation device, similar to the better known zoetrope.
I made 3 praxinoscopes to animate drawings my father did for me when I was a child.
They were part of my solo show 1+1=1.
Post Premonitionism: JG Ballard’s The Drowned World
Post Premonitionism: What do you do when you have already seen the future? In 1962, JG Ballard’s book, The Drowned World, was a prescient warning; wilfully ignored.
Forty five years later, the causes may be different, but we seem to be spiralling into an ecological melt-down straight out of Ballard’s vision. What do you do when you have already seen the future? Apparently nothing.
In Post Premonitionism, fragile steel structures seem to mimic the skeletal remains of an abandoned city. Twisted, rusty and ephemeral, they eventually will disintegrate completely, vulnerable and helpless against nature’s inexorable power.
I have transposed Ballard’s premonition of The Drowned World on to the reality of Australia; salt takes the place of water in a continent characterised by drought.
Tracey Clement
2007
Post Premonitionism was a site-specific installation at Groundfloor Gallery, Balmain in 2007. It was my second solo exhibition with the gallery.
Photos: Details 1, 2, 4 & 5, Richard Glover. Details 3, 6 & 7 & installation shots, Tracey Clement.
Border Zones
Borders are highly charged zones electrified by tension and the possibility of transgression and transformation.
Boundaries are liminal edges; cross the line and something will happen.
Whether you move from one country to another, step from a private place into the public arena, penetrate someone’s personal space, or flaunt a social taboo; breeching a border is a point of transition. Because of this borders are seductive, they exert an almost magnetic pull.
Border Zones explores intimate boundaries and the heady combination of intimacy and anxiety that surrounds them.
Tracey Clement
2005-2006
Border Zones consists of two sculptures: Border Zones (seven life-sized tulle figures) and Perimeter (a double blanket made from thread, buttons and pins).
The lifesize ‘skins’ comment on the notion that the body is like a garment that can be nipped and tucked in the quest for (unobtainable) perfection.
Perimeter highlights the fragility and danger of intimate relationships.
The work was first shown in 2005, in the Post Graduate Degree Show, SCA. In 2006, an expanded version of Border Zones became my first solo exhibition at Groundfloor Gallery, Sydney. In 2009, the work formed part of my solo show, Tracey Clement: Recent(Hard)Work at Elements Art Gallery, Perth, WA.
Photos: Tracey Clement
ravelled/unravelled (circular history)
Tracey Clement, ‘ravelled/unravelled (circular history)’ (detail), 2003, wool from 54 recycled jumpers.
Ravelled and unravelled. Memories, like old jumpers, unravel with time. They become frayed and worn. They become holey and permeable, prone to getting tangled up with each other. Memories unravel and ravel.
Circular history: rings of a tree, layers of accumulated history, memories evoked by familiar garments, unravelled and ravelled, round and round, circular, cyclical, continuous.
Tracey Clement
2003
ravelled/unravelled (circular history) was made from 54 second-hand jumpers, unpicked and rewound.
It won the People’s Choice Award at the 2003 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize and was also exhibited at Gallery 4A in 2004 and in 2005 at Sherman Galleries in Sydney, Australia before being acquired by a private collector.
Photos:Tracey Clement.
Implements
Something is going to happen. An implement implies action. It is used. An implement does something. However, it cannot do anything on its own. It is only by interaction with a person that it can fulfill its function. When you look at an implement you know that it is meant to be held and used. There is an implied physical contact and a latent history of activity.
An implement does something, but does that something have to be physical? These works investigate the idea that tools can serve a purpose other than the purely mechanical.
Perhaps an implement can perform a cathartic function: it not only slices and dices, it mends a broken heart. Maybe the long sought after ‘attitude adjuster’ is something you can hold in your hand. Or imagine if the tool you are holding could change shape or mutate to reflect the mood you are in. It could act as a signal to others, a means of non verbal communication in intimate relationships.
Tracey Clement
1997
Implements was first shown in 1998 as one of the inaugural exhibitions at Object Galleries, Sydney, Australia.
The spanners were shown as a window installation, As Seen on TV, in the 1998 Walking the Streets at the Mitre 10, Newtown, NSW.
In 2000, the series was exhibited as Utility at the Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, NZ.
Photos: Pink photos by Tandy Rowley, photographer unknown for installation in NZ, other photos by Tracey Clement.
Tracey Clement: artist and writer 