david michael clarke

a brief history of david michael clarke

David Michael Clarke [b.1969 Poole, England] studied at Glasgow School of Art and played an active part in the Glasgow art scene during the 1990's. In 1996, Clarke was awarded the Richard Hough Bursary for his rapid-fire slideshows, which combined a unique spoken commentary with a mix of images from the public arena and his personal life. Now living and working Nantes, France, Clarke continues to explore his chosen themes of Art and Love, through photography, video and sound.

Success is a difficult thing to measure. Bob Dylan once sang that there is no success like failure and that failure is no success at all. Bob Dylan never really helped anyone much. However, it seems pretty self-evident that the reason we are born with only ten digits on our hands is that no-one is ever going to need much more than that to count up his or her achievements.

"Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons."

Douglas Adams "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"

In the late sixties there was a whole band of artists who proclaimed a seperation between 'Art' and 'Life'. 'Art is Art' they said, and 'Life is Life'. For them, the two issues should never be confused. And of course on the one hand they were completely correct - who could argue with such a simple statement like 'Art is Art'. But on the other hand, whilst you can't argue with tautologies such as this, there is something in them that just doesn't wash. For example, how would you react if during an argument, your lover turned to you and said: 'The fact that I don't do the washing up is simply equivalent to the fact that I don't do the washing up, and has nothing to do with the fact that I love you.'

You see, tautologies are true, but they are only true to themselves. It is all well and good saying 'Art is Art' and 'Life is Life', but the fact that they are completely separate is another thing entirely. There is in fact nothing to prove that they are not one and the same thing. David Michael Clarke is an artist who revels in our innate ability to confuse things; to take simple things and complicate them; to take complicated things and over simplify them; in general, our innate ability to fuck things up.

Why is it that we bring logic to emotional situations? Anyone who has ever tried to fully 'understand' the idiosyncrasies of their lover knows fine well the futility of this activity. Conversely, why do we let emotions confuse what would otherwise be simple common-sense decisions? Why do we fall in love with people at work, when we know from experience it will make our lives hell? Or worse, why do we go back to bed with ex-lovers, when we know it will only multiply the pain?

In 1999, David Michael Clarke was one of the artists chosen to participate in a Nantes-Glasgow exchange. During his year in France, he fell in love and learnt french quick. David Michael Clarke studies both the moments in our lives when logic doesn't work, and the moments when we refuse to use it: like when you've just fallen in love and your mind is like a meadow awash with wild flowers; or when you've just been chucked and your heart is so full of hate that you don't even care if your football team is winning or losing; or when you desperately need to impress someone and all you end up doing is making a fool out of yourself. Through photography, video, painting and installation, David Michael Clarke treats art history as if it were a love story and treats love stories as though they were great moments in art. David Michael Clarke is a man who openly admits to being less intelligent than a dolphin.