Despard Gallery: Glen Clarke – The Last Missile Installation LAST WEEK

Official launch Friday 28 October 5.30pm

Despard has represented Glen Clarke for over 15 years and is proud to present Clark’s 5th solo exhibition
at the gallery.

Clarke won the HCC Art Prize with a sculpture of Mt. Wellington using Weet-bix back in
1993 and have had many solo exhibitions national and international since. Glen Clarke’s collages and
paintings are intricately constructed from delicately folded currency and precisely cut out images of wars
machinery and military hardware. Each component is then assembled into a tapestry of the symbolism
behind war from the artists perspective – each folded note, cut out plane, tanker, helicopter and ship tells a
story of the profits and losses attributed to war.

Since 2003 Glen Clarke has been involved with the non-profit organisation PROJECT RENEW in Quang Tri
Province central Vietnam and MAG, Mines Advisory Group Laos. Their primary objectives are Mine Risk
Education (MRE) and to clear Quang Tri & Quang Bình Province and the neighboring Ho Chi Minh Trail on
the Laos-Viet boarder of Unexploded ordinances. Clarke was the last winner of the National Sculpture
prize in 2006 with his work American crater near Hanoi #2 2005. His work is held in collections throughout
Australia and the Asia-Pacific notably the Australian War Memorial and the National Gallery of Australia
(Canberra).

GLEN CLARKE Silo #024 (detail) 2015 folded US dollars, Iraqi dinars, Afghan afghanis, cotton thread 87 x 61 x 24cm signed verso
“There is an impressive complexity of paper and pattern that constitute the work of Australian artist Glen
Clarke. As a heady cocktail of politics, economics and aesthetics are neatly folded into each of the origami
styled cannon of his works; in order to create these symmetrical configurations of banknotes and thread.
That when pinned together, layer upon layer, note upon note; become the intricate detail for a much larger
mosaic styled image. Which from a measured distance prove utterly compelling. And when given to
examining Clarke’s works with a forensic eye, they read like the DNA for a coded reality of a greater set of
truths. That is as destabilising as they might well appear decorative.

Interested in a lunar landscape of man-made ‘voids’, ‘craters’ and ‘explosions’, that have been fashioned by
internal and externals wars historically; Clarke is absorbed by how such critical conditions come to alter
space entirely. Domestic, social, political; space is the favoured currency of conflict. In which countries create
their own refugees, and a growing state of unease allows for a temporary infrastructure that serves to
promote one set of ideas over another. Thus such a history of violence, regional and international,
constitutes an archive of misshapen memories that alters the lives of the living. And for Clarke one of the
major fallouts of regional wars are the discarded shells that settle uneasily into the earth, and can overtime
disappear into the landscape like a mechanised disease set to eradicate larger numbers of humanity. As
these UXO’s or ‘unexploded ordnance’ mark a historical period for Clarke in the Indochina region; where
Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam are stitched together as countries riddled by unrest and ravaged by war.” Words by Rajesh Punj

Join us for the official launch Friday 28th of October opened by Andrew Wilkie or preview
for exhibition from Wednesday 26 October. Glen Clarke will be in Hobart for a week, so please take this
opportunity to talk the artist about his work and new exhibition.

Information about the exhibition and artist also via Despard Gallery website.

Despard Gallery
Level 1, 15 Castray Esplanade, Hobart, Tasmania, 7000
despard-gallery.com.au
[email protected]
+61 3 6223 8266
Steven Joyce. Director, Despard