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{"id":254909,"date":"2024-08-28T16:35:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T21:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/?post_type=compte-rendu&p=254909"},"modified":"2025-09-29T09:25:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T14:25:36","slug":"june-clark-witness","status":"publish","type":"compte-rendu","link":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/june-clark-witness\/","title":{"rendered":"June Clark
Witness<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Itself a long-overdue tribute to an artist of remarkable ingenuity, Witness is propelled by a logic of homage\u200a\u2014\u200ato June Clark\u2019s artistic idols, and to the inspiring resourcefulness of friends and family. The works assembled for this ambitious surveyare materially complex and conceptually rewarding.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Some of the series on view testify to Clark\u2019s layered approach to image-making. 2191 Reprise <\/em>(1997) repurposes photographs captured during a fertile two-year stay as artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, her first time living in the stimulating neighbourhood of her youth since immigrating to Canada in 1968. Transferred to paper through a rubbing technique, creating waxy textures evocative of the tracings and elisions of memory in Freud\u2019s meditations on the children\u2019s toy known as the Mystic Writing-Pad, the images are accompanied by stencilled texts that record the heady atmosphere of life at 2191 8th Avenue, Clark\u2019s childhood address. If 2191 Reprise <\/em>memorializes a Harlem past, Harlem Quilt <\/em>(1997) bears witness to the contemporary community that Clark encountered during her 1996\u200a\u2013\u200a97 residency. Printed on thrift-store fabric scraps, casual street photography is transformed into a moving installation of illuminated shrines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\"June-Clark\"
June Clark<\/strong>
Witness<\/em>, exhibition view, The Power Plant Contemporary Art, Toronto, 2024.
Photo: LF Documentation, courtesy of the artist & Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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This devotional ethos is carried forward by Homage <\/em>(2011\u200a\u2013\u200aongoing), an oneiric constellation of assemblages inspired by the shadow boxes of the artist Joseph Cornell, each one an offering to an artistic forebear in Clark\u2019s creative lineage, including a black-lacquered fetish dedicated to Cornell himself. A loose jigsaw of shaped metal fragments and twigs, Homage to Schwitters <\/em>(2012) justly presides over these ingenious collages. If the bright cynosure of Homage to Van Gogh <\/em>(2011)is indicative of Clark\u2019s penchant for material thrift, the layered textures and complex juxtapositions of Homage to Keifer<\/em> (2011)\u200a\u2014\u200aincorporating both an image of Malcolm X and a modified slave ship diagram\u200a\u2014\u200aexemplify the opposite pole in Clark\u2019s polyvalent sensibility. The latter tendency is given free rein in Keepers <\/em>(2004\u20132023), whose spidery networks of craquelure abut coarse fibres of cut rope or ragged tassels of velvet curtain. The circular arrangement of washboards altered to resemble prayer kneelers summons a community of like-minded friends and family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"June-Clark\"
June Clark<\/strong>
44 Thursday in Paris, 2004,<\/em> installation view, The Power Plant Contemporary Art, Toronto, 2024.
Photo: LF Documentation, courtesy of the artist & Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"June-Clark\"
June Clark<\/strong>
Family Secrets<\/em>, 1992, installation view, 2024.
Photo: LF Documentation, courtesy of the artist & Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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A Duchampian austerity characterizes the assisted ready-mades of The Perseverance Suite <\/em>(2021\u200a\u2013\u200a24). Materializing Clark\u2019s meditations on the persistence of kinship, works in this series repurpose familial heirlooms into arresting juxtapositions. The dramatic encounter between antique iridescent glass and oxidized farm implements in American Gothic <\/em>(2023) is representative of this waking dream-work. If the weathered railway ties and chains of Treks <\/em>(2024) recall painful histories of enslavement and flight, Clark\u2019s use of wishbones in other works channels the energies of futurity and hope that also course through this ensemble. The private iconography and strategies of Cornellian portraiture that define Clark\u2019s recent work expand the cigar-box likenesses of Family Secrets <\/em>(1992), in which family mementos and found objects are assembled into reliquary-like repositories. These memory chests are freighted with the intergeneration traumas of transatlantic slave traffic and diasporic acculturation as well as the trivial incidents of family life.<\/p>\n
Adam Lauder, June Clark<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery,<\/strong> Toronto
May 3\u200a\u2013\u200aAugust 11, 2024<\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":254906,"template":"","categories":[884],"numeros":[7089],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[832],"artistes":[7145],"thematiques":[],"type_compte-rendu":[],"class_list":["post-254909","compte-rendu","type-compte-rendu","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","numeros-112-dreams","auteurs-adam-lauder","artistes-june-clark-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu\/254909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/compte-rendu"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254909"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=254909"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=254909"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=254909"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=254909"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=254909"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=254909"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=254909"},{"taxonomy":"type_compte-rendu","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_compte-rendu?post=254909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}