5th April – 26th May 2013 Gallery S O 92 Brick Lane London E1 6RL www.galleryso.com
Spare Parts is David Clarke’s first UK solo exhibition.
GALLERY S O London is presenting the latest collection of objects by London silversmith David Clarke. Clarke is a maverick, humorist, and risk-taker, who delights in shifting his approaches and priorities to shake up every assumption about the nature and value of objects.
Spare Parts is a new collection of containers made purely from pewter. It begins with elemental forms; cylinders, tubes and pipes reminiscent of industrial ducts and chambers. Looking rather uncomfortable, darkly funny and lastingly engaging. However Clarke yet again takes silversmithing another step further, asking the audience to engage with a multitude of elements that can slot, link or connect together, in a ‘build your own,’ objects can be reinterpreted, reconfigured and adapted in a way not seen in silversmithing. Usually, the object is finalized, completed and virtually closed down.
Spare Parts allows the user in: giving permission to play. Clarke has stripped everything back, using one material only, consciously leaving the marks of construction and decision-making on view: a seam is raw and prominent; a dent is preserved; the surface is wilfully inconsistent. Clarke believes that this allows the audience to embrace the pieces as the perfect and preciousness has been removed. Again an aspect rarely addressed or worked within silversmithing.
Clarke is at heart as interested in people as in objects, and encourages a longer, deeper engagement with the object by sparking off narratives within the viewer. In developing his ideas and his titles, he borrows quotations and overheard conversations, to make his work both deeply irreverent and lastingly touching.
