Interview: Conor Clarke
by Michael Dooney of Galerie Pavlova (Berlin), 25 July 2014
Conor Clarke (b. 1982 Auckland, New Zealand) is a photographic artist who has been living and working in Berlin since 2009. She shares a studio with fellow New Zealand fashion designer Sherie Muijs, and NZ / South African artist Nicky Broekhuysen who she met whilst completing her BFA (2005) at Elam School of Fine Arts. Since 2004 she has exhibited her work in Australia, Germany, New Zealand and Turkey. Her most recent series In Pursuit of the Object, at a Proper Distance is part of the group show Typologien and continues her exploration of the picturesque and fascination with the German Industrial Landscape.
Michael Dooney: How did you come to start the project In Pursuit of the Object, at a Proper Distance? I imagine that a lot of work went into it, you travelled all over Germany.
Conor Clarke: it took me a while to come to this point. I began looking at the old industrial area in east berlin; rummelsburg. I lived there one summer and became interested in plotting views around the Rummelsburger Bucht, trying to create picturesque compositions from positions i considered most pleasing. it was kind of tricky, creating picturesque compositions with a camera is more difficult than a painting where one can easily add and erase objects, or shift them around. The composition is very important, following the rules, for example framing with trees in a shaded foreground, guiding ornamental figures, a leading subject resting asymmetrically in the distance and so on. The leading subject of my earlier works eventually became the subject of my current work.
MD: I’ve seen your previous picturesque series (Viewing Stations around Rummelsburger See) on your website. Would you say In Pursuit of the Object, at a Proper Distance is effectively the next chapter?
CC: Yes, this is like the next chapter which continued a few years later. For Viewing Stations around Rummelsburger Bucht, I made three final works which we (myself and a small group of NZ artists) showed in Istanbul, then later at the Grimm Museum in Berlin. Sometimes it was quite challenging and frustrating following the picturesque recipe, but in the end I was quite satisfied with the pictures. In each one the leading subject is the former Klingenberg Power Plant in the background and the towers. It was summer at the time they were shot so there is no steam in these pictures. I tried again later to photograph the towers in the winter, beginning at a distance, still trying to create picturesque compositions, but it became more and more frustrating. I experimented with this for around a year or so but in the end I just wasn’t satisfied. I then hired a telephoto lens and decided to focus on my leading subject closely. It was enough, a symbol of the industrial landscape, the environment was no longer necessary. Now isolated, I call it the post-industrial picturesque.
MD: Are there any other artists that you’re aware of explored that?
CC: Well there was Doré? I don’t really know much about him to be honest, but he was making picturesque views of England following the industrial revolution, cramped housing conditions, etc. one memorable image by him is his portrait of ‘The New Zealander’ painting the London Bridge in ruins, an imagined future of London.
MD: So keeping with the tradition of painting.
CC: They were etchings I think. Gustave Doré. Maybe he was French?
MD: So you started in Rummelsburg?
CC: I started in Rummelsburg. The reason I was attracted to the industrial landscape in the first place was of course because of photos I’ve seen before. The work of Bernd and Hilla Becher is an example of my early experiences with German photography and perhaps explains my romantic association with the German post-industrial landscape, it’s interesting what sticks. Not that I expected the German landscape to be covered in industrial structures, but I was attracted to it and in the beginning sought out this kind of landscape.
MD: Is there something similar in New Zealand, do you have heavy industry there?
CC: We have industry, just not in the same way or on the same scale. We don’t have the mining industry like you do in Western Australia or west Germany, but we have the occasional steel mill way in the distance, or we have beautiful hydro dams. So it’s not completely foreign for me, but when you think of New Zealand you think of nature, mountains and beaches, of birds, lush green and Lord of the Rings, am I right? You know this from pictures. It’s not that Germany doesn’t also have these things, but the image is very different. We are always in pursuit of otherness.
Continue reading the full interview HERE
Galerie Pavlova was established in 2013 by Michael Dooney as a platform for Australian and New Zealand contemporary photography in Europe.
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