Claire Barclay RSA (Elect) works predominantly with sculpture and print practices and is recognized for her large-scale installations informed by the contexts in which they temporarily exist. These include, ‘Thrum’, produced for MAC Belfast and ‘Yield Point’, made in response to Tramway, Glasgow.
Her work engages a wide range of hand making and fabrication processes to explore the nature of materials, methods of production, and relationships between people and objects. Different elements provoke ideas as to possible scenarios and interactions in relation to the human body. She is interested in how people are affected by material and form both physically and psychologically, and comprehend these by engaging a sophisticated and primal understanding of the tactile world we inhabit.
Earlier this year she exhibited ‘RAWLESS’ at Cample Line in Dumfriesshire. Other notable exhibitions include ‘Low Scenic’, an installation at the Pilazzo Giustinian-Lolin, Venice Biennale 2003. A retrospective ‘Openwide’, at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in 2009. 'Shadow Spans' at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, ‘Pale Heights', 2009, Mudam, Luxembourg, 'Shifting Ground', 2008, Camden Arts Centre, London, and 'Fault on the right side', 2007, Kunstverein Braunschweig, ‘Bright Bodies’, as part of Glasgow International Festival 2016 and a commission for the Gwangju Biennale 2016.
Throughout her career she has integrated engaged practices, teaching within art schools and collaborating within other fields including architecture and dance. She has worked for a number of years with vulnerable people through Artlink Edinburgh. Recent projects include integrated artworks for a new Library in Paisley designed by Collective Architecture, and a permanent commission for Putney Foreshore in London.
