Surface Tension

Sally Clarke and Brenda Factor

ANCA Gallery Canberra/Kamberri 15 May – 2 June 2024

A seashell collection that has remained packed for over 40 years provided a starting point for artists Sally Clarke and Brenda Factor to connect ideas around materiality, memory, place, beauty, value, desire, abstraction, symbolism and the ethics of collecting from nature.

For the artists, who share a life and studio in Mittagong, the work is processed-based, allowing one idea to be the catalyst for the next. For Clarke, the making of work and subsequent exhibition marks the beginning of an ongoing project where methods or even rituals of processing, interpreting, and reinventing become steps toward returning the seashells to their various ecological or cultural origins. Clarke mines representations of shells in art history and references female art icons, such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo, while drawing on her long-held understandings of the life and structure of molluscs to create her artworks. Factor’s wearable vitreous enamels, resembling the shiny desirious surface of cowrie shells imbued with notes of abstraction, reference the beach-worn weathered surfaces of the broken shells that form part of the marine shore ecology.

Sally Clarke, Surface Tension (installation view) 2024, ANCA Gallery, Canberra/Kamberri Brenda Factor’s brooches below.

Brenda Factor, Multiplicities Brooches, 2023-24, vitreous enamel on copper, steel pin, dimensions variable. Photos: Sally Clarke

Paintings

Sally Clarke, The Pale Carrier, 2023, acrylic paint on vinyl, 138 x 96cm. Photo: Sally Clarke

Sally Clarke, Shell Shock Topiary, 2024, acrylic paint on vinyl, 138 x 96. Photo: Sally Clarke

Sally Clarke, Venus Was Her Name, 2024, acrylic paint on vinyl, 111 x 138cm. Photo: Sally Clarke

Sally Clarke, Xray Spex, 2024, acrylic paint on vinyl, 53 x 40.5cm. Photo: Sally Clarke

Sally Clarke, Stone Face, 2023, acrylic paint on vinyl, 25 x 25cm. Photo: Sally Clarke.

Sally Clarke, Shell Face 1, 2023, acrylic paint on vinyl, 25 x 25cm. Photo: Sally Clarke. Private Collection.

Sally Clarke, Barnacle 1, 2022, acrylic paint on vinyl, 25 x 25cm. Photo: Sally Clarke.

Sally Clarke, Barnacle Eyes, 2023, acrylic paint on vinyl, 25 x 25cm. Photo: Sally Clarke. Private Collection.

Sally Clarke, I’m Not Your Oyster, 2023, acrylic paint on vinyl, 25 x 25cm. Photo: Sally Clarke.

Sally Clarke, Barnacle 2, 2022, acrylic paint on vinyl, 25 x 25cm. Photo: Sally Clarke.

Sally Clarke, Turban, 2024, acrylic paint on vinyl, 25 x 25cm. Photo: Sally Clarke.

Video Installation

Sally Clarke, Spiral (projection on the Periostracum Screen), 2024, papier mâché, wire, discarded objects, video 2:52, variable dimensions. Video: Sally Clarke

Collectable Objects

Sally Clarke L to R: Georgia, papier mâché, acrylic paint, 40 x 40 x18cm; Frida, 2024, papier mâché, acrylic paint, 40 x 23 x 10cm; L’Origine du Monde: Jo, Constance, or Marie-Anne?, 2024, papier mâché, acrylic paint, 42 x 27 x 12cm. Photo: Sally Clarke