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The Art World in Focus
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Conor Clarke

CONOR CLARKE

Scenic Potential Two Rooms 24 April–23 May 2015 Auckland
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Press Release
Today our sight is a little weary, burdened by the memory of a thousand images… We no longer see nature, we see pictures over and over again.
- Paul Cézanne, 1902.

“I am preoccupied with finding beauty in the unspectacular. I photograph piles of sand and dirt from construction sites around Berlin. I isolate these objects, then select and re-combine them into landscape compositions based on William Gilpin’s picturesque ideal.

In this case, I consider the word landscape to mean the viewing of natural or urban environments in terms of their potential to be pictures. It describes one’s response to existing objects and scenes: one’s impression of them.

While shooting recently next to the Berlin main train station, a man stopped to look at the subject in front of my camera. “It’s beautiful isn’t it…” he said, “…just like in the Alps!” He too saw the potential of these piles of earth that populate our city to recall immense and powerful landscapes.

I take photographs from sites under construction near my home, studio or workplace, to inform my study of the post-industrial picturesque. I seek escape by seeking variety, nature and beauty, exotic locations. But in doing so, I still find myself operating within the conventions of a genre, continually producing a learned view of mountainous landscape. This methodology challenges the novelty that I originally sought and I am intrigued with the result, an aesthetic of uniformity and sameness. These are landscapes of contradiction.

When the rain causes the sand to slip,
Leaving a trail,
A trace.
The surface takes on the appearance of one exposed to the elements,
It ages the object,
Bears down on it,
Gives it character.”

Conor Clarke is a New Zealand artist working and living in Berlin, specialising in observational photography. She has exhibited in New Zealand, Australia, Germany and Turkey since graduating from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 2005. She was the recipient of many photography awards, including the Mt Eden Young artist Award in 2004 and Metro Canon Young Photographers Award in 2007 and received Creative New Zealand Visual Arts funding in 2013. Clarke is returning to Auckland in September 2015 to take up the Auckland Council Artist Residency in Waitawa Regional Park.

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About the Artist

Conor Clarke is a New Zealand artist whose photographic practice examines the politics of image-making and representation, with a particular focus on how historical methods of representation shape cultural understandings of the natural landscape.

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About the Gallery

Two Rooms is a contemporary art exhibition venue located in a converted warehouse in Central Auckland, New Zealand. Opened in August 2006, Two Rooms presents a program of residencies and projects by leading International and New Zealand contemporary artists. The building houses two exhibition spaces, the Project Room and the Long Room.

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Address
16 Putiki Street
Newton
Auckland
New Zealand
Opening Hours
Tue - Fri, 11am - 6pm
Sat, 11am - 3pm
(1)
Auckland 16 Putiki Street, Newton
Two Rooms contemporary art gallery in Auckland New Zealand
Two Rooms
16 Putiki Street, Newton, Auckland, New Zealand
+64 9 360 5900
http://www.tworooms.co.nz

Opening hours
Tue - Fri, 11am - 6pm
Sat, 11am - 3pm
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