Clare Strand ~ Photographer

Art and Machines. The experimental photographer explores her conflicting relationship with the medium in a new, unexpected exhibition. Who,What and Why by Another Magazine

Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time Review by Sean O’Hagan. Guardian.

“There is always something odd – in a good way – about Strand’s work. That oddity rests in the tension between her often personal, always playful take on conceptualism and her wilfully old-fashioned methods – the archive images, black-and-white tones and kinetic machines here are a case in point.”

Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time show, Grimaldi Gavin/London 29th April- 6th June

To think about the demise of a work before it is made is an uneasy point to start from.To acknowledge and knowingly invite entropy into a process, in times when an artworks value is partly defined by its longevity, could be considered foolish or errant. Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time is a show that is designed to grapple with these ideas, in both a personal and philosophical way. The exhibition considers this complex proposition; can works continue to degrade yet still retain their value, their aesthetic and maintain a sense of reason. The works in the show are moving, rubbing, scrapping and most importantly changing - changing in ways that can’t be mathematically defined or logically anticipated. They are works making themselves.Clare Strand 2015.

10 Least Most Wanted showcased in A History, Art, Architecture and Design from the 80’s to Today. Centre Pompidou publication.(pictured)

Artist as Archivist section. Other artists include WALID RAAD, AKRAM ZAATARI, FREDERIC BRULY BOUABRE,ELISABETTA BENASSI, HASSAN DARSI AND ROSANGELA RENNO.

5 minutes with Di Smyth and Clare Strand

“The show is very much grounded in Surrealist themes – specifically with movement, machinery, dust, frottage, sex and chance”

“But Clare Strand is not like other photographers, and there is one thing that marks her out as one of the UK’s most exciting practitioners in photography today – she is an illusionist” Review by Barry W Hughes for SMBH

“The space felt more like a factory of thought, with the spectator experiencing the inner cogs of a photographer’s imagination. The jarring and challenging relationship Strand has with the medium being laid bare for us to see” Review by Harry Rose, Darwin Magazine.

‘Strand’s exhibition is considered and analytical. In the artist’s own words, it is ‘an exhibition of balanced opposites; better and worse, backwards and forwards, up and down and in and out.’ Review by Katheryn Lloyd for This is Tomorrow.

“In between evidential material and Surrealist experiment, the artist’s work examines the very substance of the image” Review by Celine Bodin, London Photography Diary.

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Material, 2015
Monochrome Film incased in an aluminium box with peephole

Material (Still), looking through the Peephole.

Rubbings, are photographed sections of trees, at points of divergence.

Faces - European Portraits since the 1990's Curated by Frits Gierstberg Feb 2015 - Feb 2016

Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam and Museum for Photography Thessaloniki.