Meghan Clarke is a Scottish artist based in Rotterdam (NL). She works between textiles, text, sound and performance. Her work is concerned with collecting, occupying and rearranging time. Engaging in slow and meticulous processes of undoing and reordering she creates intricate tapestries from found and foraged materials - textiles, text, a cardboard box, a fragment of sound. Her repetitive processes are a subtle act of defiance, a form of non-productive productivity that elongates the in-between moments, creating time for lingering and uncertainty. Her current research explores the connections between rhythm, repetition and textile work. Meghan received a BA Textile Design from the Glasgow School of Art. In 2020 she graduated from MA Contextual Design at Design Academy Eindhoven, where she received the Gijs Bakker award for her graduation project This Work of Body / This Body of Work. She is a textile instructor at WdKA, hosts a monthly radio show with Ceola Tunstall Behrens on RadioWORM, and is a host at Shimmer in Rotterdam Zuid.
Snagged, Caught & Dragged (2023) - Snagged, caught and dragged, a breath and a word between worlds. A series of hanging sculptures assembled from a collection of found materials, gathered from the thrum of daily life. They are part of a larger composition of work that is trawling for landscapes of lost words and seeking to release them. Photographed here as part of RRRxDeIjskast nomadic exhibition that took place in September 2023. Size - approx 2.5 x 60cm / Materials - chain, knotted thread, tin, dried flowers, plastic beads, buttons / Photographer - Silvia Arenas
The Rivers That Made Me (2023) - 40 aluminium tiles in a cartographic arrangement. Engraved by hand with the three rivers of home - De Nieuwe Maas, River Clyde & Endrick Water. Size - 180cm x 72cm / Material - reclaimed aluminium tile
Untitled(April) (2023) - One of a series of tapestries created within the timeframe of a month. From the first to the last day, the same stitch is repeated on an area of cloth until the time runs out. Size - 40cm x 46cm / Material - secondhand curtain lining, inherited natural dyed cotton thread
The Shape of Labour (2022) - Installation view of works installed during The Shape of Labor at LocHal from Dec 2022 - Feb 2023. Photographer - Joris Buijs
32 Knots (2022) - A collection of 32 knots, one for every year, individually cast using the delft casting method. Pictured here, they are acting as weights and have been hung from the work Repetition 6 (Nothing Special) within the context of the exhibition The Shape of Labour. Material - Tin / Size - 2cm x 1.5cm / Photographer - Bruno Baietto
Spending Time Listening and Gathering (2022) - Performance with Kirsten Spruit at WORM as part of Staging Stasis.
Big Hoop (2021) - A collaboration with Flora Lechner. By taking the embroidery hoop and its contents as the starting point, and blowing them up to a monumental scale, the tools and labor of this traditionally timid and hidden activity become unashamedly visible. Presented as part of the group show 'In Reverie' and as a performance in Rotterdam in December 2021 that was part parade and part protest. Performers - Roberta Di Cosmo, Matilde Patuelli, Flora Lechner and Meghan Clarke / Photographer - Charlie Spiegelfeld / Videographer - Cosimo Beduini
Taking Time Taken (2021) - A series of netted sculptures produced during the timeframe of the exhibition Moving In Stasis. As the show was unable to open to the public, the exhibition space was transformed into a space for the production of new work. I created a new net each day to document the process, counting the knots to measure the time. Size - various / Material - thread, dried flower, fishing tackle, tin, ceramic beads, other found objects
A Dialogue of Knots (2020) - A story about Nothing Special, a curtain that found its way to me through many hands. The film uses footage recorded during the careful undoing and reordering of the curtains threads. This work has been presented as a short film, a performance, and as a hand traced text as part of an installation for The Shape of Labour. Format - Film / Duration - 06:40
This Work of Body / This Body of Work (2020) - This work is a durational pause in which the body performs the critical and paradoxical act of non-productive productivity, by engaging in devoted repetitions and an embodied occupation of time. The pause is a form of sabotage inspired by factory workers who gained momentary reprieve from repetitive labor by throwing parts into the assembly line to stop the machines. The repetitions manifest in textile works, exhausted through iterations of undoing and redoing to become a garaged record of past and present. The work is presented as a performance and a series of textile tapestries that are artefacts of the durational process. Pictured here is Repetition 6 (Nothing Special). Photographer - Femke Reijerman
