Claire Barclay: Tenuity

Drawing on materials that might clothe and adorn our bodies or domestic furnishings, this group of works conjures everyday tactile relationships with the physical world. Barclay developed these compositions from cut out shapes that recall garment pattern pieces, employing a squeegee to push ink through the open-weave fabric. New forms and illusions of depth emerge through the artist's characteristic process of improvised overlapping. Barclay explains “I enjoy the build-up of different ‘weave’ directions and the incidental nature of defects in the fabric, bent threads frayed edges etc. I suppose the work is about finding visual interest in unexpected and unspectacular things.”

"[Barclay assembles] objects that evoke their original form and function but take on new meaning in relation to each other and the space in which they are sited. Her prints relate closely to her sculptural practice through their experimentation of how solid forms relate to one another in space"

- Tate Collection, UK.

This group of works features abstracted images of combs, often incorporating translucent layers with darker, opaque forms to produce apertures through which details are framed, dissected and obscured. A motif which recurs across her practice, the comb interests Barclay as “they are ubiquitous and remain almost unaltered since their invention by our very distant ancestors for whom they were significant objects." In 'Life time', their relationship with the body is intensified through the use of flesh-coloured blends of ink that appear bloody whilst recalling marbled plastic. These corporeal, human allusions activate Barclay's use of overprinting, whereby formal dominance triggers subtly anthropormophic effects that the artist describes as both "potentially threatening or pleasing.”

“Claire Barclay’s work is large in scale and interventionist in ambition, typically taking the form of installations made in situ and in response to the space in which they are shown. Yet these large works depend for much of their meaning on the small, highly-crafted objects that occur and recur throughout them... These small objects are the elements with which and in which a work takes shape. They are begun a long time before the installation itself and are what remains after it has been dismantled.”

- Fiona Bradley, Director of Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh.

Barclay’s ‘Tenuity’ series of unique screenprints evolved instinctively, spreading across multiple sheets of paper in interrelated sequences that suggest functional relationships and changing perspectives. At the core of this group of works are halftone images of ambiguous objects drawn from the artist’s sculptures and installations, such as intricately crafted metal bowls and rings. Barclay notes that a crucial moment in her early artistic development was her realisation that using ready-made elements such as found objects, brought too many clear-cut meanings into her work. The small, machine-tooled elements depicted here exemplify the enigmatic yet familiar forms that the artist began to create or commission. Through focussing on these key motifs, this group of prints demonstrates Barclay's far-reaching investigations into the physical and symbolic nature of materials.

These richly coloured screenprints are part of a small series of interrelated works, examples of which are in the collection of Tate, UK and have been exhibited at Mission Gallery, Swansea (2018); the Hunterian, Glasgow (2018) and Touchstones Rochdale, Lancashire (2015). The prints are defined by graphic forms made from cut paper, arranged in overlapping, translucent layers to produce effects of depth and dynamism. The artist often employs flesh-coloured ink to emphasise the human qualities of these geometric forms. Barclay explains, "It is as if just the skin of the body is present, empty of flesh and bone [...] I’m playing with the drama and suggested gestures that we so keenly project onto what are in reality very rudimentary graphic shapes."