Antony Clarkson: General Statement 2012:
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​Questions and Paradoxes, Enigmas and Wonders; excerpts from 'the Manifesto of a 'Global Village'-Idiot'.

​What is art? Why am I an artist? I'll answer the second question first, as I think I know the answer to it; whereas it's harder to be sure about the first. I am an artist because I feel the need to make art. But surly this creates a paradox, if I'm not sure what art is why do I feel the compulsion to make it and how do I know when I have made it?

So back to the first question, what is art? To most of society, art, certainly contemporary art is something of an enigma. Much of my work involves a self-reflective analysis of art and its relationship with society, as I feel that is where the real significance of art lies. Through this process no idea is considered too big or small, too banal or outlandish. Indeed I sometimes think that the job of the artist is really to recognise a piece of art work rather than to make one. 

It has been said that being an artist is the only job that nobody ever asked you to do. That somehow suggests that art is an extra, an indulgent, not one of life's necessities. In the past I was once asked to comment on the idea of 'indulgence' in art for a magazine article. The writer's thinking was about the kind materials that artists use, for me the idea had stronger connotations. The very idea of being an artist is an indulgence. Here I am doing something, apparently, more for myself than for anybody else; I proved that because nobody asked me to do it. But society accepts it; it, doesn't seem to consider art as an extra. Society is happy to indulge artists; it even seems to need them. So what does society get out of the deal?

The answer is that with this indulgence comes a responsibility. Society expects us to ask the kinds of questions and do the kinds of things that it would like to ask and do, but is too timid to. We have to create the kind of things that make people ask questions and yes, even wonder. So society needs the artist, but as it doesn't full understand or trust them, so it keeps them on the fringes of society, like the shaman of old. In a world described as a “global village” artists are the 'global village' - idiots.

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Antony Clarkson Artist Statement: The Apophenia Series 2025:
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Apophenia: the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas).

My work across painting, sculpture and installation explores the intersections between perception, space, and memory. It is my intention to open new ways of seeing and experiencing the world, offering audiences opportunities to pause, reflect, and reconsider.
The paintings in the Apophenia Series are pure abstraction, drawn from my own experience and memory. They are created to ask the observer to reconsider their preconceived perceptions of the world by providing them with forms that have an uncanny familiarity about them without being anything absolute. They have a form of anthropomorphism, but a distant one being just suggestive enough that they deliberately lead the observer. Some parts may lead in a certain direction whilst others may contradict that idea and propose a different one. Certainly, if one tries to hang too fixed a notion of ‘depiction’ on one of these paintings you are destined to end up confused and lost, like trying to use an Esher image as a blueprint for your home.

My research for this project has led me to some very interesting reading, which has broadened my thinking on the subject into a consideration of how the brain generally makes sense of the messages coming from the eyes and indeed via all of the senses. The latest thinking on these optical processes is that we don't really see every detail of exactly what is in front of us. Indeed, it now appears likely that the brain creates a substantial part of what we see, based on what it expects to see, and only adds extra details, or corrections based on new information from the eyes. Effectively, the brain joins the dots. It makes connections based on a balance of limited information and memory, effectively it uses preconceptions. But what if the image suggested by the conjunction of those dots is fallacious? Then as with my paintings we are into the realms of apophenia.
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Not all that we see is perhaps as straight forward as we think and I hope to give my audience space to consider this through their interaction with my work.