George Clark is an artist, writer and curator. His work explores the history of images and how they are governed by culture and technology as well as social and political conditions.
George studied Fine Art (BA Hons) at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London (2000–2003). His work and research have focused on moving image in the expanded field working across film, installation and performance with a focus on collaborative practice in global context. His projects explore non-aligned histories and geographies, looking to question how histories are constructed and developing methods of exchange and collaboration globally. In recent years he has worked to build new models of cultural production through expanded transnational collaboration.
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Practice
George Clark’s work bridges art and curatorial practice with a focus on moving image and film, exploring the internationally history of images and how they are conditioned by culture, technology and social-political conditions. In recent years he has worked to expand his practice and build new models of assembly, exhibition and moving image production developing projects in expanded context and through transnational collaboration.
Over the last decade he has built transnational projects exploring new modes of exchange, collaboration and dialogue. In 2018 he co-founded the West Java West Yorkshire Cooperative Movement with Ismal Muntaha, Bunga Saigian and Will Rose a collaborative project with the Jatiwangi art Factory, Indonesia and Pavilion, UK. This ongoing project has supported new projects with over 20 artists and numerous communities across both regions. The collaboration builds on his exhibition Living Archive (Jatiwangi Art Factory, 2017; Yunseul Museum, 2018) and the collaborative film Jatiwangi /The Scent of Jati trees (2018).
Double Ghosts is an evolving multi-part project developed with the 2018 Taiwan Biennial. The project explores the status and potential of unrealised and fragmented histories from the legacy of Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz (1941-2011) to animist cinematic traditions in Taiwan. Prompted by a single paragraph describing an unfinished film made by Raúl Ruiz in Taiwan in 1995, Double Ghosts considers the echoes of this unrealized project to explore cinematic and political phantoms. Materials from this history are formed into a new choreography with each iteration proposing an archeological method for considering the legacy of lost histories from site specific screenings to ritual actions, exploring the cinema as space of dialogue across dispersed geographies, histories and lives. Recent iterations have included new performances in collaboration with lololol, an Taipei based art collective founded by experimental musician Sheryl Cheung and multimedia artist Xia Lin.
Other works include the feature film A Distant Echo (2016) shot on 35mm film in various Californian deserts, exploring themes of identity, culture and the construction of history in collaboration with musician Tom Challenger and the short film Sea of Clouds / 雲海 (2016) structured around an interview with the artist Chen Chieh-jen.
His research into other models of film projection and site specific exhibition has led to ongoing project inspired by tradition of nomadic projectionists across South East Asia who specialise in showing films in temples as part of ceremonial activity. His ongoing project Eyemo Rolls consists of over 200 individual 35mm film rolls shot since 2011 in numerous countries including Chile, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, USA, Mexico and New Zealand. The project is a means to respond to the work of other artists, to think about cultural entanglement and the cinema as a locality situated between places. Each time the project is shown the rolls are specially selected with accompanying works by other artists specific for each venue
Current and recent projects
Recent projects have been presented at New York Film Festival (2019) Berwick Film and Media Art Festival (2019), Hanoi Doclab (2019), Taiwan Biennale (2018), AV Festival (Newcastle) (2018), Focal Point Gallery (Southend-on-Sea) (2018), Yunsun Museum (2018); Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art / MMCA, Seoul (2017), Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (2017) and Museo de Artes Visuales / MAVI (2016) among others.
Through his curatorial work at Tate Modern (2013-2015) and in independent projects, he has curated retrospectives of Ute Aurand, Julian Dashper, Lav Diaz, Camille Henrot, Vlado Kristl, Luis Ospina and Chick Strand, as well as thematic exhibitions on Japanese expanded cinema (with Julian Ross and Go Hirasawa, Tate Modern 2016), the L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema (Tate Modern, 2015), and Infermental, the first magazine on videocassette with Dan Kidner and James Richards (Focal Point Gallery, 2010). His has written for numerous exhibition catalogues for Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul, Tate, UCLA Hammer Museum and various other publications. He has been a jury member at various festivals including DOX LISBOA (2017), 25 FPS Festival (2016), International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2015), CPH DOX Festival (2013) and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2009).
Publications, exhibitions and other outcomes
Exhibitions
2019
Double Ghosts solo show at Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick Visual Arts, Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK (solo show)
Hyphen, Ambika P3, London (group show)
2018
Wild Rhizome, Taiwan Biennale, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung (group show)
A Tale of Two Cities: Narrative Archive of Memories, Yunseul Museum of Art, South Korea (group show)
Get Out and Push!, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea , UK (group show)
2017
Come Together, Jakarta, Indonesia (group show)
Living Archive JAF Gallery, Majalengka, Indonesia (solo show)
2016
A Planter’s Art / 種植者的藝術, Soulangh Cultural Park, Tainan (solo show)
Film Festivals
2019
Berwick Film & Media Art Festival, UK
Courtisane Festival, Ghent
Punto de Vista, Pamplona
International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam
Hanoi DocLab
Irish Film Institute
New York Film Festival
2018
Village Video Festival, Jatiwangi
London Film Festival, London
AV Festival, Newcastle
2017
Asia Culture Station, Chiang Mai
Images, Toronto
Leeds Film Festival
Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival
EXIS, Experimental Film and Video Festival, Seoul
Fronteira International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Goiânia, Brazil
Edinburgh International Film Festival, Edinburgh
Festival Film Dokumenter, Yogyakarta
DocLisboa, Lisbon
Essay Film Festival, London
Media City Film Festival, Windsor
Image Forum Festival 2017, Tokyo
Arkipel Jakarta International Experimental & Documentary Film Festival, Jakarta
2016
Experimenta, London Film Festival, London
25 fps, Zagreb
Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival
Performances
2019
Bangkok Sound Delay, with Tanatchai Bandasak, Berwick Film & Media Art Festival
Future Tao Workouts & Performance, with LOLOLOL (Sheryl Cheung and Xia Lin), Berwick Film & Media Art Festival
Remang-Remang, with West Java West Yorkshire Cooperative Movement, Pavilion, Leeds
2018
Walking Dad: XTC x George Clark, Jatiwangi Art Factory, Majalengka
Double Ghosts, Chin Pao San cemetery, TCAC, Taipei, Taiwan
Like a boat floating in the moonlight / 像一隻船 在月夜裡搖呀搖, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, Taichung, Taiwan
2017
A Distant Echo with Hanyaterra, UK/ID Festival, Jakarta, Indonesia
Es oblicuo pero está todo ahí / It’s oblique but it’s all there, Museo de Arte Moderno de, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Untitled (Eyemo Rolls), VISIONS, Montreal, Canada
It’s oblique but it’s all there, BIMI / LUX, London
On The Planters Art: An illustrated talk on films, maps and gardening, LUX Scotland, Glasgow
2016
Mosquito Cinema: Journey to the West, Tsung-yeh Arts and Culture Centre, Tainan
On The Planters Art: An illustrated talk on films, maps and gardening, Los Otros, Manila
2014
A Distant Echo, Pavilion at The Leeds Library, Leeds
Bibliography
2019
Ian White: Conversation between Ian White and George Clark, Artists’ Moving Image in Britain Since 1989, ed. Erika Balsom, Lucy Reynolds, Sarah Perks, Paul Mellon Centre BA, 2019
Under The Earth, 'IM Heung-soon: Toward a Poetics of Opacity and Hauntology', National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea
2017
There is no motion in a motion picture, ‘Gavin Hipkins: The Domain,’ Ed. Courtney Johnston, Victoria University Press, New Zealand
Contact with the Polish Avant-garde Guaranteed: Modes of Exchange in the Workshop of the Film Form, in Workshop of the Film Form / Warsztat Formy Filmowej, Ed. Marika Kuźmicz and Łukasz Ronduda, Fundacja Arton, Warsaw, Poland
A Peculiar Apparatus: Spectres of the Penal Colony, Arkipel Penal
Colony - 5th Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, ed. Manshur Zikri, Forum Lenteng, Jakarta, 2017
2016
Moving Towards The Sun, with Louise Menzies, 'House Studies II', Ed. Sophie Bannan, Jonathan Smart Gallery, Auckland, UK
To Pour Milk Into a Glass: Film, Video and Conceptual Art in Britain 1964–1979 in 'Conceptual Art in Britain 1964–1979', Ed. Andrew Wilson, Tate Publishing, UK
On Correct Colour: On Margaret Honda's films, 'Made In LA: a, the, through, only', Hammer Museum / UCLA, USA
2014
Art & Film Debate: George Clark with Chris Dercon, Tine Fisher, Jean-Pierre Rehm, Mousse Magazine, Italy
2012
A Detour Around Infermental, Ed. George Clark, Dan Kidner & James Richards, Focal Point Gallery, UK
2011
Cinenova: Reproductive Labour, Afterall, UK
2010
The Future's Getting Old Like The Rest of Us, extract of working script (with Beatrice Gibson) in 'The Happy Hypocrite What Am I?' Ed. Maria Fusco, Bookworks, UK
In Defence of Reading Books By Their Covers, Issue: Surface, YH485 Press, UK
2009
Approaching Unreal Asia, Afterall, UK
The Way Out: Luke Fowler, Mousse Magazine, UK
2008
Tony Conrad: On the Threshold, Afterall, UK