Rod Clark | The Work

 

Statement

Rod Clark is most interested in the variety of visual devices that he can employ, including cultural and informational symbols, icons, signs, shapes and unusual objects, to explore the interplay of figure/ground and the visual semantics of shape and area as well as structural ideas of meaning, or at least understanding, which can arise from visual correlations of the tropes of written/spoken language.

The work is informed by ideas of one thing obscuring or revealing another, the loose-parts theory, concepts of self-organisation, information theory and the view that collage represents a most resonant if not literally realistic response to the complex world we inhabit. If the works will contain enough of the paradoxical (literally ‘beyond meaning’) they may approach a true independence and congruity.

A balance/continuum of space, colour and action, movement and stillness. A painting is a place where Clark can combine formal and organic elements, where intention and engineered chance coexist and can be applied at all stages of the work, during conception and execution.

The paintings are constructed from various source material including drawing, photography, typography, found objects and mark-making in general. They employ an amalgam of regular pictorial space, sections of still-life, landscape, interior and abstraction. In this way they are less like external reality itself and approach our internal perception of it.

Serial and Parallel ideas: The paintings are mostly produced in series, which allows exploration within a controlled framework. These series can have elastic parameters as in the main Paintings Series or be quite controlled, as in the Commemorative and Design Series, which derive their limits from cultural phenomena alone. For Clark the pictures reflect his interests; history, science and economics, or put another way, precedents, perceptions and products.

CV

EDUCATION

1986 MA Graphic Design and Art Direction Royal College of Art

 

EXHIBITIONS

1991-2 exhibitor Reading Visual Arts Week

1992 JLC Gallery (Reading)Printed Works

1993 JLC Gallery (Reading) Mirrored Constructions

1994 Initiated GTC (Global Toothbrush Collection)

1995 JLC Gallery (Reading) Architectural Collages

2002 Launched Index at www.brighton100.com.

Launched Printworks. Series 1

Group shows at Brighton Artists Gallery (Nov2002–May2003)

2003 - 7 Open House at 23 Osborne Rd, Brighton

2007 9 Adam Street London WC2

Frog Firle Barn/ Wingrove House Hotel, Alfriston/

2008 - 11 Open House: 12a Springfield Road, Brighton

2011 Matt Roberts Salon, Vyner St, London E2, October

The OTHER Art Fair, Bargehouse (OXO) London SE1, November

 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Included in: Communicate: British Independent Graphic Design since the Sixties. The Emergence of British Graphic Design. Barbican. Sept 2004 – Jan 2005

 

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

1981: Work purchased by TATE GALLERY (London) for

Artists Book Collection Title: Hum 2

1996: Work purchased by the TATE GALLERY (London) for Artists Book Collection Title: The Ship Does Not Float

2006: Artwork ‘Hallowed Turf’(Wembley) purchased by Wolverhampton Art Gallery 2006