ALEXANDRIA CLARK’S ARTIST STATEMENT
Art is a connection;
a pathway that connects the artist with their audience.
Through this idea, I aim to produce work that can reach the viewer on a personal level, by evoking personal memories, exposing my own, and taking them through an experience that connects us intimately.
I am mainly interested in recording myself and others around me;
It is the notion of watching people and exploring the boundaries or ‘crossover’ between innocent observation and actually becoming an intrusive voyeur that truly intrigues and excites me.
The people of our world seem to have an obsession with being noticed, sharing the worry that one day we will realise that our life has passed us by without us being recorded and thus not continuing to exist after our bodies have physically gone.
My work takes the form of text and typing within a performative context. Through live performances (typing on a laptop which is directly linked to a projection behind me), I have explored the act of writing, where time is overlapped, where the dimensions of memories in the past and the record of people in the present are merged. I write in such a way that makes the audience question whether I am writing about them which leaves them feeling uncomfortable. I play with rhythm and the alignment of the words upon the page to create pace and manipulate how the viewer reads it. I find this control that it gives me, a very important part of my practice.
Within my artwork there is a continual theme of the idea of playing games and ‘role-play’; during the performances, I take on the roles and perspectives of different people, both real and fictional. This encourages persistent questioning of whether it is fantasy, truth or a mixture which adds the discomfort the audience is already feeling.
When it comes to it….
it all really….
is just a game.
