Art

In the Future …. How will we Create?

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‘In the Future …. How will we Create?’ took place from 9 November to 14 November 2021 at the UK Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai. The Royal College of Art is the Heritage Partner of the UK Pavilion, having a 170-year history of shared heritage with world exhibitions, going back to the first Expo, The Great Exhibition of 1851. The RCA’s contribution to the UK Pavilion will bring together a wide range of interdisciplinary projects from staff, current students and recent graduates. I developed and delivered ‘A City in a Day’ project as part of my ongoing research. Four local schools with approximately 20 students participated in an hour’s workshop, each hour a different age of the city’s development.

A City in Seven Days

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I am pleased to release the video of A City Seven Days project produced at FutureLab, Shanghai 2019.

FutureLab was an initiative from WestBund Art Center drawing together art and design educators from around the world. I was invited in my role as Head of Programme of Graduate Diploma in Art and Design at the Royal College of Art to create a project demonstrating synergies between degree level and primary level teaching approaches and methodologies to creativity in student-centred learning.

My ongoing creative thinking and learning research work with FunDrawing initiated the ‘city’ as a vehicle or model for creative engagement. The workshop investigates how creativity can be enabled through action-based teaching and learning approaches to embed and encourage creativity in the curriculum for primary and early secondary learners. The projects’s basic premise is based on the creative and imaginative potential of the humble cardboard box, focusing on proven alternative approach models to creative and trans-disciplinary engagement to provide an immersive experience and critical takeaways from skills-based teaching of art and design.

Memory and Light – conference interview

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I was recently invited by Emre Altindağ, PhD researcher and editor for an interview in the first edition of Memory and Light and to be the keynote speaker at the accompanying conference in August 2021. Memory and Light is an international artist-led collective and new publication for illustrators, graphic novelists, and storytellers. I discussed with Emre the role of narrative and storytelling as a key tool in my approach to sketchbooks and my practice. Article pdf here.

Port of Entry – cross stitch journey

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Port of Entry opened this week at the Sun Pier House Gallery in Chatham, the work on show is produced in response to travels and research around the nature of visual collecting and transcription from sketchbooks, from cultures and communities as diverse as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, London and Chatham. It looks at the nature of the language of man-made objects as symbols, both recognised and remembered or shared, in terms of agreed knowledge and narrative.

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These initial observations and memories have been translated into a series of drawings which respond to the nature of visual motifs and metaphors commonly associated with home-spun shared knowledge embedded in the decorative nature of ceramics and textiles.

This has culminated in a series of commissioned cross stitch embroideries working with designer maker Linnet Hannan, transcribing the drawings in to a cotton, cross stitch language associated with both traditions of European samplers and rural embroideries from China.

The work will also be shown in October at the Eagle Gallery in Clerkenwell, London as part of Agency, an exhibition showcasing the work of artists who make up The Artists Agency.

Port of Entry

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Clough Port Of Entry PR DRAFT 21JUNE18 copy.pages

I have a solo exhibition Port of Entry opening on the 9th August until 9th September at Sun Pier House, Chatham, Kent. Preview: Wednesday 8 August 6pm – 8pm

See the Press Release below for more information, written by Mark Segal at the
Artists Agency of which I am a selected artist.

Port of Entry is a range of new drawings, prints and embroidery by Gary Clough exploring architectural space and geographical locations, while challenging notions of the imagined, the remembered and the known. In addition Clough is shaping an individual response to the different cultures engaged within his travels through China and the UK.

Shaped Narrative Lungs 2017 Gary Clough Ink on Paper
Shaped Narrative Disc* 2017 30×30 Gary Clough
Shaped Narrative House 2017 30×30 Gary Clough Ink on Paper.

The images emerge from the habitual practise of drawing that artists use to explore and process the world around them. These drawings, most often contained within the intimate and private spaces of the sketchbook, happen when no one is looking, a form of practice that keeps the muscles of the hand, eyes and imagination working together, constituting a speculative work of re-imagining.

The sketchbook is an intrinsic part of Gary’s practice, operating as both virtual and literal studio and collective cognitive landscape. The pages demonstrate how ideas are both generated and revisited in a constant process of analysis and reflection. It is driven by an innate playfulness and an ongoing discourse with the nature of the perceived, known and made.The sketchbooks innate mobility is clear in the pages as they document the artist’s journeys, stopping-off points and destinations through geographical, historical and disciplinary visitations and positioning. For the first time, Clough has made new works utilising cross stitch approaches, borrowing from its tradition as a homespun practice for documenting personalised interpretations of the world and mirroring his use of the sketch book as a starting point for assimilating the made environment. The work plays with the notion and challenges of the transformation into motif associated with this craft tradition, combined with the blue and white palette associated with rural Chinese embroideries.

The work in Port of Entry engages further with the notion of a shared entry or starting point in the development of a repository, or archive of a highly personal genus of objects arranged and presented as sets, families and suites of images. The genealogy and heritage of the images draw from influences as broad as the pages of the Argos catalogue and the shelves of B&Q and Pound Land, to the Song and Tang dynasty blue and white Chinese ceramics, to the cotton indigo embroideries of 18th century rural China. Clough has focused on developing contemporary notions of patterns and symbols as visual metaphor, intrinsic to global traditions of shared and/or remembered narrative histories within the creative industries and its cultural currency. The work attempts to investigate further contemporary notions of and relevance to the use of visual metaphors, motifs and symbols generated in the traditions of the decorative object essential to the sharing and evolving of shared visual language over generations through mnemonic and cultural exchange and interaction.

The work displayed in Chatham allow Clough to develop new drawings and new ways of working in the context of the architectural spaces and this geographical locations. The project’s location in Chatham is essential as it directly engages with its position as a key cultural gateway and interface historically, for the UK which draws from an existing community who share the cultural heritage of the images, mark making, pattern and colour of the work. Chatham’s historical positioning as a key military and commercial port and literary and narrative heritage is a conscious influence and reference for the artist’s 20 year association with the location and communities. The exhibition also enables the engagement with the broader community of Chatham through national and international connections through the Universities and Education sector, supported by an artist talk and lecture.

New Projects: 2018

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Working with Shenzhen National Art Museum and Sun Pier House, Chatham and supported by the Artist Agency  I am in the process of developing new work for an exhibition in April, May, August and September.

Port of Entry is a new body of work developed from sketchbook images, informing a series of large, site-specific wall drawings, inferring a connection between Shenzhen and Chatham. Port of Entry investigates the idea of a port, not only as physical gateway, but also a conceptual notion of entry point for cultural and social information exchange and discourse.

The second part of the project will be a another series of site-specific wall drawings developed from images produced in Shenzhen. These drawings will be developed through workshops with primary school students, investigating the nature of the imagined and remembered.

The project will culminate in a publication which will document the exhibitions and the ongoing dialogue between the artist and the two locations.

Trace Engines – four days in Folkestone

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The images below are from the recent showing of Trace Engines and new work at the Brewery Tap UCA Project Space http://www.brewerytapprojectspace.com held between 29/09/17 and 03/10/17, at part of the Folkestone Fringe.

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It was  a fantastic space to work in and a pleasure working with the curator Georgie Scott and Terry Perk from UCA and being part of the incredibly vibrant atmosphere of the Folkestone Triennial .

Folkestone trace engines 2017
Folkestone trace engines 2017
Folkestone trace engines 2017

Over the four days there were over 270 visitors, including a group of students and staff from UCA Rochester Foundation programme, also a well known local canine art connoisseur who made an apearance at the private view.

Folkestone trace engines 2017
Folkestone trace engines 2017
Folkestone trace engines 2017
Folkestone trace engines 2017

I had a really fantastic four days invidulating the exhibition, a great opportunity to meet, local, national and international visitors to the Folkestone Triennial and to develop new work in the sketchbook……….watch this space.

Trace Engines – The Brewery Tap – UCA Project Space: Folkestone Triennial 30/09/17 – 03/10/17. Private View 29/09/17 – 6pm – 8pm.

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I will be showing the Trace Engines project as part of the Folkestone Fringe, at the Brewery Tap – UCA Project Space, from the 30/09/19 – 03/10/17.

Trace Engines is a body of work produced through UCA research funding, in collaboration with AIP Gallery, Guangzhou, China. The work was previously exhibited at Rochester Art Gallery, November 2016 – February 2017.

I will also be exhibiting a series of new drawings entitled Shaped Narratives.  The Private View will be on the 29th September, from 6pm – 8pm, all are welcome.  53 Tontine Street, Folkestone, CT20 1JR.

I will be invigilating the exhibition and of course working in my sketchbook between the 30/09/17 – 03/10/17.

Shaped Narrative Lungs 2017 Gary Clough Ink on Paper
Shaped Narrative Disc* 2017 30×30 Gary Clough
Shaped Narrative House 2017 30×30 Gary Clough Ink on Paper.
Vitrine Assemblage, ink on paper
Vitrine Domestic, ink on paper
Vitrine Stack, ink on paper
Engine Planning, 2015

The Brewery Tap – UCA Project Space is a research hub, exhibition and project space run by the MA Fine Art and MA Curatorial Practice courses at the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury.

I am delighted to have been asked to contribute to this project and the broader Folkestone creative quarter and community and the Folkestone Triennial.