FOCUS ::: Interact @ Sydney Contemporary (beam contemporary)

Clare Rae, Untitled #2, 2013, archival inkjet print, 50 x 60 cm, Editions 5 + 2 AP (image courtesy the artist)

The aesthetic value prescribed to the body in movement and how we make meaning through movement are investigated in Clare Rae’s works. Clare’s series Interact (on show as part of Sydney Contemporary), incite a contemplative look into the ways we utilise space in terms of our own physicality. Her photographs particularly deal with modes of human movement that are indicative to what can be classified as dance. This subtle suggestion is what brings the viewer to thinking about how we engage with our capacity for movement, and how environment plays a role.

Caught in mid-motion, the figures in Clare’s photographs take on unconventional forms, but this sense only comes across in relation to environment. The figures digress from movements commonly associated with the environment in Clare’s photographs, and although there is an ambiguity, the space in Clare’s series is recognised most strikingly as not a stage or any other obvious site for performance. This distinguishes an intimate look at our relationship with the environment; ourselves meeting the external, and how we make meaning of space via modes of movement.

Clare’s photographs communicate a melodic or rhythmic sensitivity, absent in the literal but which assists in understanding these works as performance. The figures transcend from regular, prescribed functioning of the body to a state of performance.  It’s slight how this occurs in Clare’s photographs, and this might be in part due to the nature of photography. These works show the beauty of working within a restricted colour palate and offer an inquisitive look at how we categorise and organise ourselves through particular modes of movement.

Clare’s series slides into the realm of performance and this process of organising movement allows for an intriguing look at the constructed meanings we place on how we use our body.

Clare Rae
Interact, 2013
Archival pigment prints on Ilford Gold Fibre Silk
50 x 60 cm approx. Edition of 5
(Exhibited at Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, 19-22 September 2013)