Clare French (Associate Member)

Clare’s practice considers the (impossible) human desire for meaning. Her works operate as poetic objects that elicit a slow, engaged looking and affective response in the viewer.  The insistence on minimal, repetitive systems expand and intensify audience attention, raising questions about making and meaning and communicating the impossibility of the finite or the absolute. Her treatment of surfaces index Clare’s decisions and actions, reference art historical conceptions of making and expose broader hierarchies of labour, making and materials.  Clare’s work develops according to semiotic systems, which are then disrupted through employing materials in repetitive, labour-intensive and time consuming ways; generating the unexpected and facilitating crucial ‘happy accidents’. Clare works episodically and in series to further democratise and multiply meaning.

Clare graduated with a first class BA in Fine Art from City & Guilds of London Art School in 2018. She previously received a first class MA in Social Anthropology from Goldsmiths College. During her Fine Art BA Clare was shortlisted for the David Ballardie Memorial Travel Award and the Artists Collecting Society Award and was selected to participate in The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, Decorative Surfaces Paint Technique Practical Workshops.