CONOR CLARKE

In 2026, Clarke was awarded a McCahon House Parehuia Artist in Residence, situating her practice within a lineage of New Zealand artists who have reimagined landscape and environment. Drawing on 18th-century aesthetic conventions, her work particularly examines how historical methods of representation impact cultural understandings of the natural landscape. Her work often exposes how the desire to view ‘unspoiled’ scenery remains entangled with colonial ways of looking and forms of possession.

Early life and background

Conor Clarke was born in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and is of Ngāi Tahu (including Ngāti Kurī), Irish and Welsh descent. She grew up in rural South Auckland before studying at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2005. After graduating, Clarke was based between Aotearoa and Europe, spending a decade in Berlin and undertaking further study at the Academy of Visual Arts (HGB) Leipzig as a guest student.

Clarke returned to Ōtautahi / Christchurch in 2019 to take up a position as Lecturer in Photography at the Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, where she also commenced an MFA in 2021. Working primarily with medium-format analogue photography alongside sound and video, she explores ecology, colonialism, land use, and landscape representation from a critical, research-driven perspective.

Conor Clarke Artworks

Conor Clarke’s artworks investigate how images mediate relationships between people and place, drawing on the Picturesque, Romantic painting, and colonial visual cultures to question how these traditions continue to structure contemporary views of landscape. Often working in series, she brings together precisely framed photographs with strategies drawn from documentary, conceptual art, and environmental studies to show how ‘natural’ scenes are shaped by tourism, industry, and environmental management.

The Picturesque and Romantic legacies

Early series such as Viewing Stations Around Rummelsburger Bucht (2010) examine the Picturesque as an aesthetic and social convention that prescribes how landscape should be framed, consumed, and owned. Clarke traces how Picturesque viewing devices and vantage points—once used by artists and tourists to demonstrate taste—also supported colonial claims over land, turning images into trophies of aesthetic conquest. This critical lens extends through later works, which often position the camera itself as a conspirator in the colonial gaze while also turning that gaze back on the viewer.

Water, infrastructure, and ecology

Across projects including The End of Wordsworth Street (2018), Ground Water Mirror (2018–19), and Unchained Melody (2019), Clarke follows waterways, reservoirs, and infrastructural sites to consider how Western thought has separated nature from culture. Photographing dams, treatment plants, and rivers, she highlights how environmental systems are regulated, privatised, and aestheticised, while still being imagined as ‘natural’ escapes from urban life. Her work often brings into focus the agencies of water and land themselves, complicating human-centred perspectives.

Bodies, identification, and more-than-human relations

In works such as Left bank, middle reach, high expectations (2017) and Veil of the Soul (2018), Clarke stages portraits and bodily encounters that unsettle the distance traditionally assumed between viewer and landscape. Rather than maintaining a detached position, these images suggest identification with more-than-human worlds, pushing back against Romantic models that treat nature as a separate realm to be visited, improved, or possessed.

Select public commissions by Conor Clarke

• Unchained Melody (SCAPE Public Art project), Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki, Christchurch, 2019
• Public art and education projects developed with the blind and low vision community in Ōtautahi, supported by the Harkness Fund, from 2020

Select awards, funding, and residencies

• McCahon House Parehuia Artist in Residence, Titirangi, Aotearoa New Zealand, 2026
• Rangi Ruru Girls’ School Artist in Residence, Christchurch, 2023
• Harkness Fund (University of Canterbury), towards new work with blind and low vision communities, 2020
• Tylee Cottage Artist in Residence, Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, 2017–18
• Auckland Council Artist in Residence, Waitawa Regional Park, 2015
• Best Series, Renaissance Photography Prize, London, 2015
• Visual Arts Funding, Creative New Zealand, 2015

To be kept up to date with news relating to Conor Clarke, follow her on Ocula.

Conor Clarke Exhibitions

Clarke has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions in Aotearoa and internationally, including major institutional presentations. Below is a selection of important exhibitions.

Select solo exhibitions

• Conor Clarke, Te Tuhi, Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland; presented in association with Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival 2026
• As far as the eye can reach, Two Rooms, Auckland, 2021
• The End of Wordsworth Street, Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, 2018
• Unchained Melody, Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki, Christchurch, 2019
• Ground Water Mirror, Ilam Campus Gallery, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 2019
• Scenic Potential, Two Rooms, Auckland, 2015
• In Pursuit of the Picturesque: In Pictures (Observations from New Zealand), Das Giftraum, Berlin, 2013–14

Select group exhibitions

• Site Seeing, City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi, Wellington, bringing together Conor Clarke and Bridget Reweti
• Touching Sight: Conor Clarke, Emma Fitts, Oliver Perkins, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Christchurch, 2021
• As Time Unfolds, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Christchurch, 2020–21
• The Devil’s Blind Spot: Recent Strategies in New Zealand Photography, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and touring, 2016–20
• Photography editions and projects with Ilam Editions, Ilam School of Fine Arts, Christchurch, 2021

To be kept up to date with upcoming exhibitions featuring Conor Clarke, follow her on Ocula.

Conor Clarke FAQs

Ocula | 2026