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Clement Page
Gaze
2008
Watercolour on Archer's aqualle 640 gsm handmade cotton paper
147 x 97 cm | 57.9 x 38.2 inch |
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 lement Page is a versatile artist who has worked with a variety of media and with a predominant concentration on watercolour and film. His recent focus has been on the production of a series of large-scale watercolours, which draw on his interest in marginalized techniques. His father a lecturer in literature and visual culture, taught him watercolour painting as a child, his Grandfather and Great uncle, Connor and Roderick Barrett, were both professional artists. Page's pieces are painted in monochrome, and appear like photographic negatives, with large areas of untouched white paper played off against subtle translucent washes. His interest in memory, dream and the language of the unconscious serve as the conceptual field of research for his work. He has recently focused on Freud’s case histories of Phobias, which he treats as narratives however dis-continuous. His views of childhood as being a vitally important, yet a lost chapter in our later lives are manifest in the paintings: many of them feature children in vulnerable or ambiguous situations, aim to trigger in the audience collective and subjective memory
Born in Devon, England in 1967, Clement spent much of his childhood in the countryside, and his family's strong connection to the arts meant he was encouraged from an early age to pursue his artistic interests. He initially completed a Diploma in Fine Art at the North Devon College of Art before going on to earn a BA from Cheltenham College of Art. He later started an MA in critical theory at Goldsmiths and finished a further MA at Westminster University in Interactive Art and Media, where he developed his film work. Alongside his studies and art making he worked as a visiting lecturer at the Tate Gallery, Sotheby’s and the Ruskin School of Art. Page’s essays on art have published in several professional journals, including three in Third Text Journal. In 2007 he moved from London to Berlin, being attracted to developments in the art practice there. In the last ten years Page has exhibited across Europe, including the Lisson Gallery in London, and in galleries further a field. He has received grants and awards from the Austrian Cultural Forum and English Arts Council. Since moving to Berlin Page has exhibited with brot.und.spiele gallery and is now represented by Kuckei + Kuckei gallery where he will have a solo show of his new watercolours from 29th August until 3rd October 2009.
Clement Page: I was born in 1967 in Exeter, Devon, England.
Art Interview: What was it like for you growing up there?
Clement Page: My father was a lecturer in English and Visual Culture at The University of Exeter so I suppose I had quite a privileged upbringing. I remember our house being full of art and books I was always surrounded by things that I couldn’t yet understand but could see.
Art Interview: What did your mother do for a living?
Clement Page: My mother was a teacher, painter and poet, the daughter of the sculptor Connor Barrett. When she was 3 years old they left Birmingham, England and went to New Orleans and then New York to live. Connor was a pacifist and didn’t want to fight during the war, so it was prison or go to America. He had a pretty successful career in the 1950s and 1960s in America. His brother, Roderick Barrett my great uncle, also did well in America in the 1960s and 70’s as a painter. Roderick became a professor of painting at the Royal Academy of the Arts in London when he returned to the UK. My grandfather on my father’s side was a brilliant watercolourist and member of the Royal Watercolour Institute in London, where he exhibited regularly until his death in 2002.
Art Interview: Were you around your grandfathers’ works when you were young?
Clement Page: Yes, absolutely. From a very young age artists surrounded me. I grew up thinking it was normal to have art and books everywhere in your house! My mother’s father Connor had a sculpture study in Colchester that was the most enchanted studio I’ve been in. His highly figurative sculptures, sometimes with moving parts, had such wonderful material presence. You felt like you were never alone with them in your presence.
Art Interview: Was your family supportive of your choice to work as an artist?
Clement Page: Yes, absolutely. I’m fortunate that I’ve always been encouraged. My mother and father nurtured my gifts and taught me watercolour when I was 7 and oil painting from the age of 10. When I was 14 I wanted to go to art school and they encouraged me in every way they could. So I was extremely fortunate. On the other hand it gave me a lot of artistic baggage that I had to shed before I could discover my own voice. Even in the nineties when I was writing and making video/film I was always drawing, even if I didn’t want to paint for a while. When I came back to painting it was via drawings for my films.
Art Interview: What was your time during your education like?
Clement Page: It was a weird time actually. In 1987 painting was very dominant in the UK, Germany, Italy, and perhaps America as well. Everything was just painting, more painting or sculpture. In England everyone says you have to go to the London art schools. I had applied to St Martins and Wimbledon, but decided to go to Cheltenham art school instead, since I’d heard they actually taught painting there. The teachers at Cheltenham were mainly from the Royal College of Art and Chelsea. In the first year we had this wonderful man called Paul Thomas, he was a great painting teacher and I owe a lot to his initial influence. I think he really enabled people to feel confident and experiment with paint because he gave them grounding in how you can do it both conventionally and unconventionally.
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Clement Page
Simulacra
1988 |
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Art Interview: Were they able to help you develop your voice at Cheltenham?
Clement Page: They tried. Everyone’s work at school is in the main derivative. People are often too young to find their voice at the age of twenty.
Art Interview: So what they really offered you was a strong technical background to develop from?
Clement Page: Yes very much so.
Art Interview: Why did you choose to study at Goldsmiths - University of London?
Clement Page: I started the MA in Critical theory and Fine Art, but I left because the atmosphere was not conducive for producing good work. By the time I had arrived in London in 1991 Goldsmiths was everywhere. Everywhere you went there were young Goldsmith’s graduates. They were setting up cheap studios in Shoreditch or curating shows at the Serpentine Gallery, or making it big. It was an exciting time, and for a while everything seemed up for grabs. I met nearly all the interesting Goldsmiths artists within a few years and set up a studio in Bethnal Green with some of them. I curated and wrote essays with others. Essentially the artists were taking back power and calling the shots for a while. But that all came to an abrupt end in London around 1996, when the YBA Brand (Young British Artists) was official and already dead. Most of my generation of London artists left for Europe or America to make their careers.
Art Interview: So what did you do afterwards?
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Clement Page
Night for day
2009
Watercolour on Archer's aqualle 640 gsm handmade cotton paper
98 x 72 cm | 38.6 x 28.4 inch |
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Clement Page: There wasn’t really an afterwards - since I wasn’t on the campus much. I was mainly working with other students curating or exhibiting in shows. I met Stuart Morgan (1948-2002) at that time, who was the editor of Artscribe and famous for his art criticism in ArtForum and Frieze. He mentored me and really helped me a lot. One day he told me he was curating a major show at the Tate Gallery called Rites of Passage and he asked me if I could talk about a young Goldsmiths artist called Hamad Butt who’d died quite young at the age of 32. Stuart put two huge, amazing sculptures of Hamad’s in the centre of the exhibition. They were right next to works by Joseph Beuys and Bill Viola. I gave the lecture on Hamad’s work at the Tate and it started a ball rolling. Soon I was giving lectures everywhere. The work was very demanding, and very tiring. In the end I was doing six or seven lectures a week without a permanent teaching position.
Art Interview: Did you have your MA at that time?
Clement Page: No I didn’t even have my MA, I just had my degree but I guess because I had a first class honorary degree in art history and fine art it was a bit different to a normal fine art degree.
Art Interview: You hooked up with the Tate purely through Stuart Morgan?
Clement Page: Yes.
Art Interview: How did you meet him?
Clement Page: I met Stuart because I wanted him to write a catalogue for a show I was curating. I was told the only way I was going to get into the London art scene was to meet the key players, and the only way to meet them was, for example, to curate an exhibition… So I curated a show. I asked Stuart Morgan to write the catalogue and he agreed. I surprised some people in London because within a few years I pretty much knew everybody. But it actually didn’t help me; it worked against me. A lot of people thought, ‘who is this guy who just turns up and thinks he can walk right into it?’ So then they just try to block you. But I think it’s always like that- I had a huge address book and half those people I never even phoned again. They were just quite unpleasant people who were only after what they get out of you, not what you could share together. London is particularly like that, more than New York surprisingly.
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Clement Page
Words like fingers
1995 |
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Art Interview: How long were you doing lectures?
Clement Page: My first one was at the Tate in 1995. I wanted to publish something and Third Text offered to publish my lecture. So I had this launch at the Tate and was published in Third text journal. It just went from there and the Tate offered me two gallery talks a week taking people around the collection and discussing particular subjects or particular shows.
Stuart Morgan was teaching art history at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University. He’d committed to teaching the whole term but he was writing a book and couldn’t fulfil his commitments. So he asked me if I could take over for him half way through. I think the students were shocked because I looked virtually the same age as them, but then they realised I was quite knowledgeable. Writing and teaching were a way for me to earn money and research art. At that time I wasn’t ready to push the art that I was making. So I had a successful academic time, but I still wasn’t happy.
Art Interview: What were you doing between 1992 and 1995?
Clement Page: I had my day job teaching, spent time writing and kept making artwork in my studio. I had stopped painting two years after arriving in London and began making performance photography, and video works.
Art Interview: How did you go about beginning a professional career as an artist?
This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Clement Page on July 10, 2009. The interview took place over the telephone in Berlin, Germany and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine. Lydia Ward wrote the introductory text. |
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