Claire Barclay (born 1968) is a Scottish artist. Her artistic practice uses a number of traditional media that include installation, sculpture and printmaking, but it also expands to encapsulate a diverse array of craft techniques.[1] Central to her practice is a sustained exploration of materials and space.[2][3]
"While there is always a concept behind the work its actual form comes out of the 'play' with materials and my response to them"[4]
Barclay's first solo exhibition was at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow in 1994.[4] In 2003, Barclay represented Scotland in the Venice Biennale.[5] Her work was the focus of a solo exhibition at the Tate Britain in 2004.[7] In 2009 she had a solo exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery, which documented significant works created by Barclay over the previous 12 years, alongside newly-commissioned installations.[1] She has had several solo exhibitions at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. In 2017 she showed new large scale sculptural work at Tramway Gallery in Glasgow,[8] and the work made here amongst others were reworked and adapted at Mission Gallery, Swansea, in 2018[9]
Themes
Situated within realms of the domestic, Barclay's work juxtaposes the reified space of the gallery with that of the everyday.[1] The objects present within her installations allude to dichotomies between function and dysfunction; subsequently, this imbues them with qualities of both the familiar and strange, simultaneously imparting them with an elusory nature.[10]
Style
Barclay creates large-scale installations, often made in situ and in response to the spaces in which they are shown.[1] Her practice is also deeply rooted in process and craftsmanship; accordingly, her installations include an array of materials that oscillate between those associated with mechanization and those associated with the domestic: steel, cast-concrete, machined aluminium, rubber, brass mesh, ceramic, leather, canvas and printed fabric.[11] These dualities further position her artistic process between the handcrafted and industrially produced, as well as the natural and man-made.[12]
^ abcFunktion - Dysfunktion - Function - Dysfunction : Kunstzentrum Glasgow : contemporary art from Glasgow : Claire Barclay, Martin Boyce, Nick Evans, Nicolas Party, Ciara Phillips, Mary Redmond. Todd, Jacqueline., Rehkopf, Kurt., Zirden, Sylvia., Neues Museum (Nuremberg, Germany). Nürnberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst. 2013. p. 47. ISBN9783869844817. OCLC873822785.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^"CLAIRE BARCLAY". Glasgow International. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
