Claire Undy

Born Nottinghamshire, 1986

Lives and works in London

Frustration with the subjectivity of communication is the driving force behind my work. The conveyance of meaning (for example between an artist and viewer) is inevitably distorted by the artist’s transference of thought into an object of art, or verbal or written language and the resulting interpretation of this by the viewer. The ‘art’ itself seems to exist in the gap between these understandings, and I wish to achieve a greater understanding of it by removing the obstacles of subjectivity to comprehension.

I am interested in Heidegger’s ideas about the possibility of poetry being a pure and thus objective form of communication, as both the purpose and the method of making the communication are the same. However, poetry is inherently bound to the language it is written in, and even the most sympathetic translation can result in some transmutation of meaning. I would like to explore the notion of pure communication through visual art, in particular language-less, subject-less abstract painting.

Nevertheless, the challenges of Modernism and Postmodernism arguably make it impossible for a painting to be entirely non-referential, as in doing this the work implicitly refers to an almost ecclesiastical history of art theory. However, I don’t believe that this renders the medium ineffectual. I feel that in order to truly speak freely from subjective association we must consider the abstract in the context of the real world. By understanding a work in a factual, rather than hypothetic way- as material in a space, in relation to ourselves as human beings; we remove a layer of code – that of interpretation- and thus allow ourselves to speak again more directly.

According to these ideas, I have made the factual, physical elements the subject of my work. I consider the work’s composition to be the wood, fabric, gesso, pigment, wax, oil and varnishes that it comprises of, rather than a final layer of paint within a given boundary on the surface of the canvas. The properties and the interrelation of these elements are both the subject matter and the language of my practice. By protracting and emphasizing the characteristics of these elements I hope to ask what a painting ‘is’.
To avoid an entirely hypothetical discussion of something physical the work must be something. Yet, it is not possible for one work to represent the ‘idea’ of painting: every possibility of what it is and is not. Making one hundred paintings was an attempt to overcome both arbitrariness and misplaced meaning. The significance of a choice, such as a colour or placement of mark within an individual painting is reduced to one percent of its former worth when the painting is one of a hundred. Thus the notion of the genius of the artistic hand is removed, and the relevance of the connection between the artist and the artwork is weakened. Furthermore, no single painting could be said to represent the piece as a whole, or be a typical example of S100.

The communication made by the work is one of its own making.  As opposed to process art, where a method is employed to create an unplanned visual effect, my work uses the visual effect to communicate the method of manufacture. The physicality of the making and the properties of the materials are demonstrated through exaggeration. Despite subjectivity and language barriers, the physical presence of objects is almost always universally understood. Throw a rock at almost anyone in the world and they will try to move out of the way- say “move out of the way” and very few would. It is this non-verbal, arguably ‘pure’ form of communication which I am attempting to utilise.

Interview with Alli Sharma, Articulated Artists

Interview with Holly Willats, Spring issue of Art Licks, 2011