White Paper by (Spain) - English
Clementine Keith-Roach
“My Sculptures Echo the Past, Chronicle the Present, and Gaze into the Future”
The works of British artist Clementine Keith-Roach are historical trompe-l'oeils: they exude an ancient, classical air but speak to the future and other possible worlds. Yet, they don't stop there; they also provide clues on how to attain it: through embraces, care, support, and a living memory brought into the present.
In the manner of cities where different cultures have and continue to coexist, the artworks of British artist Clementine Keith-Roach are also places of coexistence, yet what coexists in them is time itself. Various eras and temporalities intertwine in her unique, distinctive, and eye-catching pieces. What captures our attention? A combination of familiar everyday elements that feel vaguely reminiscent, and the unprecedented way she reconstructs and displays them. They seem to possess a nature as old as time, yet in stark contrast, their message is animated with the themes of our time. Feminism, caregiving, fragments, waste and what is done with it... She utilizes existing forms and makes them her own in a very physical, corporeal manner. Her hands, or those of others, cradle, support, and embrace objects that she rescues like fragments of the past; the purpose behind this unique combination is to shed light onto something new through the generative potential of ruins and the past. Indeed, shedding light onto the dark and illuminating are the pillars of her career. Her pregnancy provided Clementine Keith-Roach with the opportunity to take distance from herself and shed certain parts of her identity in favor of another: suddenly, she was two people at once, and from that moment on, her being would inevitably be intertwined with another.
There's a very apparent reflective component in these works, underscoring the interests of an artist who is also the editor of a magazine titled Effects, focussing on art, poetry, and essays. Its pages capture the scope of these aesthetic effects, their social and philosophical narratives, in contemporary lives. She lives and works in Dorset, UK. And in saying she lives and works, perhaps one should add a small footnote, namely: "if you'll pardon the redundancy," because, for her, work and life are indissolubly linked, as she explains in this interview..
The past seems to be very important in your work. Was this the case from the very beginning? How did the past become so important in your creative work?
I am drawn to things from the past, whether it be ruins, tombs, fragmented pottery, prayer books that bear the marks of years of touch, talismanic sculptures rubbed shiny by many hands, or standing stones unmoored from their ritual function. These are the things I seek out. What interests me about these ancient things is their crypticness, they speak of a world I do not inhabit—they are pregnant with imaginative potential. As I look at them, I wonder what kinds of worlds have produced them and what kind of significance people would have attached to them. These things from the past remind me that completely different ways of thinking, making and being together, have existed in the past, and they give me hope that new ways of being together might be possible in the future.
I try to make sculptures that have a similar enigmatic feel to them, which makes the viewer wonder what function they have, what world they belong to.
The concept of "ruin" is present in one of your latest exhibitions, but it also seems to have weight and importance in your whole work. Is that the case? Where does its beauty lie?
Ruins are sites of destruction and mourning but can also be full of potential. They sit on the threshold between the past and the future. It is this ambiguous temporality that attracts me to them. For Earth Sky Body Ruins, my most recent exhibition at Ben Hunter Gallery, my partner Christopher Page and I explored aesthetically and conceptually the destruction of old worlds and the possibility of new ones emerging from the ruins. Whereas Christopher investigated the ruin through his large-scale mural, I focussed on the architectural term ‘Spolia'—the practise of building new structures from ruins and fragments of an older building. I made a sarcophagus out of detritus. Car parts scavenged from scrap yards, old toys, bricks, plastics; I mixed these with organic elements
such as wood, shells and rocks and then added to this crush casts of body parts, children's hands, broken feet. This was a process of transfiguration, attempting to make a new form, something that appears to have a sacred function out of the ruins of consumer society. ‘Spolia' holds the memory in its form and yet births something new.
There are many breasts in your pieces, many feminine traits. Is your art feminine, feminist, both, or without distinction?
I found the experience of pregnancy and early motherhood profound, I felt myself estranged from my body, my identity, entangled with another. Although my work was born out of this experience, it is more about how all through life we are all entangled with others, about how world-building is a collective endeavour. To me, feminism is about building new egalitarian structures based on care rather than dominance out of the ruins of patriarchy. I show this in my work through figures doubling, tripling, a mass of caressing hands, supporting and engaged in collective care, there is a loss of identity in these works.
I do often use breasts in my work, mostly isolated and in the act of producing milk. The lactating breast is fascinating to me as an interface between bodies, a connection point of physical dependency which then becomes taboo. I am interested in the afterlife of the breast in our psyche, as a kind of memory of a bond, which, according to the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein becomes a ‘lost object' that we continue to search for in different guises throughout life.
Going back to the relationship with the past, what past or moment from the past do you feel nostalgic about? What are your sensations towards this feeling?
I am not nostalgic about the past, but I am interested in the historical process and the passing of time, and how objects and bodies hold memory. The vessels I use within my work are antique, they are marked by age and use, I see them as archiving both the labour of the people who made them and the history of their use. My process is to acknowledge and bring out these histories when making them into new sculptures. The casting process is a way of documenting time, it's a kind of sculptural photograph that captures an impression of bodies and objects at an exact moment. So my sculptures contain multiple temporalities—I would say they are marked by the past, document the present and look to the future.
Do you feel you are a sculptor, a ceramist, or simply an artist?
I feel like a sculptor and an artist, not a ceramicist, the terracotta vessels I use are pre-existing. I would say plaster casting is at the core of my practise. The process of making copies of bodies and things alienates them from their original form and allows me to see them in new ways. Casting is a method rather than an expression and so de-centres me as the artist. In the same way, when I paint my sculptures I am mimicking a pre-existing surface, so I am guided by the vessel rather than my own gestural expression.
What materials do you enjoy handling the most? Plaster—its materiality, its alchemy, its history.
Do you find it important to show or demonstrate how art is intertwined with your life?
My life and work are totally intertwined. My house is next to my studio and often becomes an extension of my studio. I collaborate with my partner, I cast the hands of my kids; I use the detritus from our lives within my sculptures. I use my work to process life and think, but I don't see my work as a portrait of my particular life but of course, it emerges from it.
In your social media, you shared a manifesto signed by many art personalities in favor of the liberation of Palestine. Does the artist have to be committed to his time?
Tens of thousands of people are being killed in Palestine at the time of writing this, I am horrified and call for a ceasefire. Standing up for the Palestinians is about standing up for the oppressed, only by supporting the oppressed is there a chance of freedom for everyone.•