Press release for ‘To capture a cloud’
Arte Globale and Artsy are pleased to present the first online solo exhibition by Georgia Clemson, ‘To capture a cloud’. As a global community, this terrible pandemic has united us in our longing for connection with the people and places from whom we are separated. For many, objects and images allow us to access these connections through memories, if only for a moment. ‘To capture a cloud’ brings together pieces from three bodies of work to represent our collective dream of the time ‘before’.
Each work has been carefully selected to draw a comparison between the ability of the physical body and the image to perform as an emotional vessel. Motifs of the body repeat throughout Clemson’s work. Hands reach out for faces; cityscapes and bodies are glimpsed through apertures formed by openings in the mouth, the nose and the ears. These are the portals through which our senses are aroused and can be reawakened by an encounter with a photograph. It is possible to revisit the subtle smell of a loved one’s hair or the sound of a faraway city street in this way.
The 12 collages present a uniquely intimate and personal opportunity to view the artist’s working processes adjusted for lockdown. These compositions were made at home by hand in London using Clemson’s archive of prints and test strips from every darkroom she has worked in. As a colour darkroom obsessive, accessing this facility is a sorely missed ritual for Clemson who regards photographic paper like a ‘sensitive and volatile skin’. This sensitivity to the impact of gentle hands-on interventions remains evident in all of the collages.
The artist describes sifting among this material for shapes, colours and textures as a ‘meditation’ through which the new work made conversation with three-dimensional pieces and experimental prints created before lockdown. The meeting between the new and the past in a virtual space, affords all of the work a very present and contemporary resonance.
