antony clarkson
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The Athole House Studio
Self-Isolation Artist Residency
30th March 2020 - 7th November 2021

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Over my career I have taken part in many artist residencies in various parts of the world; I have even organised and run a residency program myself. 2020 has brought new challenges to us all, I however intend to treat these challenges as opportunities. With this in mind today, the first day of my self-isolation having arrived back from my studio in the Untied States last night, I I launch my new blog which will become an integral part of this website as I redesign is over the coming weeks.

Artist Residencies give artists the space and perhaps more importantly the time to make new work; I intend to treat my time in self-isolation in the same way that I would if I were on an artist residency in another studio in another part of the world. Athole House Studio maybe one of my home studios but for me it is a work space, and lets face it, we all now have the time.

THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 27th FEBRUARY 2021: DAY 335

2/27/2021

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Desiderata. The Unreliability of the Extended Context:
Books-by-the-yard, Ring-lights and Andy Warhol.

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(The Unreliability of the Extended Context: Books-by-the-yard, Ring-lights and Andy Warhol.

Today I’m going to take a slight sidestep away from my ongoing text regarding ‘the search for the sublime’ to begin to consider how the area, which I have referred to as the ‘extended context’ of portraiture during my recent notes, has suddenly taken on a new significance due to the Covid lockdowns. As I have previously expressed, the idea of the extended context has been well known and understood within the arts for centuries; indeed I myself, in what might even seem to be somewhat prophetic circumstances, utilised it in an extreme manner when it became to central focus for my self-portrait painting ‘Desiderata, things desired’ (above)  in which my chair substitutes anthropomorphically for my person.

The notion of the ‘extended context’ although not known by that title, or indeed, probably widely recognised at all previously, has not only become better understood by the general public but it also become something of a fashionable talking-point during 2020 due to the sudden pervasive use of Zoom and other such video conferencing media. Whereas the concept was previously used almost exclusively by artists to give this greater depth of ‘background colour’, accurately or not, to the personality of their subjects, it is now being used by politicians, business people and even egocentric social media users to do the same.

MPs sit in front of rows of well-thumbed volumes as they stare gravely at us from our TV screens (another interesting thing I’ve noticed during this time is a growing business in online companies selling second-hand-books-by-the-yard) suggesting that they have read and digested them all. Businessmen in expensive suits sit at even more expensive, gleaming, minimalist desks, only adorned by the latest and most outrageously expensive, high-tech gadgetry, partly there to facilitate the Zoom meetings but mainly there for appearance. Even home cooks on Tic-toc have taken to buying ring-lights to illuminate and give life to their rows of stale herbs and spices and to make the most of their, normally seldom used, culinary spaces.

Perhaps this is finally Andy Warhol’s famous 15 minutes of fame? If so it is perhaps not only a fleeting but also a sham fame. Can we trust what we see? Can we ever believe in what this extended context tells us about personalities when it can be just bought online by the yard? Could we ever trust it? How many of those painted noblemen that we see in art galleries, quill in hand, could actually write?
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  • CODEX
    • plane >
      • Apophenia: An Uncanny Presence.
      • Control(s)
      • Personal Topographies
      • The Self-Isolation Residency
      • Americana
      • Mauve Skies
      • Scotland
      • Selected Drawing & Paintings,
      • The Teaching Years
      • Spatial Paintings 2006-2008
      • Paintings 2006
    • mass >
      • The Blind Men and the Elephant.
      • Spatial Conceptions 2014 - 2022
      • Painted Objects
      • Autograph
      • The Newtonian Nightmare
    • volume >
      • Enso nest
      • Someone else's storey
      • Shower, The Process Residency 2013,
      • Concrete Haiku
      • Atypical
      • The Murder of Crows.
      • Composition in White (Painting), The Breathe Residency:
      • Composition in White (Sculpture), The Breathe Residency:
      • Floorplan
      • Paper Scissors Rock
      • Pilgrimage
      • The Fifth Column
      • Tension
      • Arch
    • blogs >
      • The Self-Isolation Residency: Blog 2020-2021
      • Apophenia: An Uncanny Presence. 2022
    • artist statement
    • cv & education
    • contact