Claire Grant has written for:
Garland Magazine ArtsHub Lemonade: Letters to art The Sustainable darkroom
Exhibition Review for lemonade: Letters to Art
Courtney Pederson and Charles Robb: Fractionate, Lemonade: Letters to Art, 24th April 2024 (Grant X Wilkes – collaboration with Lee Wilkes)
Entering Fractionate, we are confronted by a bandsaw: its teeth bared at eye height, the macabre products of its labour laid to rest in piles of offcuts arranged on the floor. The scene evokes pathos and nostalgia, with a hint of dark humour. A cluttered collection of sculptural remnants from almost thirty years of practice fills Wreckers Artspace. Tables littered with orderly clusters of segmented figures and disembodied heads greet us, whilst larger scale moulds lean against the gallery walls, patiently awaiting their turn for deconstruction.
ARTIST interview for garland magazine
Kevin Diallo: Ode to Zouglou, Garland Magazine, 26th September 2022
Claire Grant talks to Kevin Diallo about the vivid imprints of his journey from Cote d’Ivoire in the Churchie Emerging Art Prize.
Smiling figures dance and gyrate, move and sway across my screen. I don’t fully understand what I’m seeing, and I definitely can’t understand what they’re singing about in French, but I like it.
A quick google search produces hundreds of Zouglou music videos on YouTube, with a top hit by Magic System recording over 12 million views. This niche musical genre was developed during the late 1990s in the West African nation of Côte d’Ivoire. Artist Kevin Diallo joins me from there via video chat, after recently relocating back to his childhood home from Sydney.
Exhibition Review for artshub
The Churchie Emerging Art Prize, ArtsHub, 30th August 2022
Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art (IMA) hosts the Churchie Emerging Art Prize 2022, an open category snapshot showcasing early career contemporary artists from across Australia, held annually since 1987.
The mantle of a national emerging art prize is an ambitious category, especially when whittled down to just a dozen finalists accepted across all visual art forms. Twelve finalists were selected to contend for the $15,000 non-acquisitive prize, from a field of over 400 entrants. ‘The Churchie’ delivers an array of interdisciplinary new talent from every state and territory except the NT, showcasing a diversity and rigour of practice in the next generation of Australian artists.
Exhibition Review for garland magazine
Fresh and Salt Waters Meet in Black and White, Garland Magazine, 30th November 2021
Claire Grant writes about Brian Robinson and Tamika Grant-Iramu of Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait Islands) heritage, who unite their practices in a confluence of freshwater and saltwater country for the dual exhibition A Carved Landscape: Stories of Connection and Culture.
I spoke with the artists, Tamika Grant-Iramu and Brian Robinson, at Onespace Gallery just hours before the opening event of their collaborative exhibition. A Carved Landscape was initially conceived as a mentorship between emerging practitioner Grant-Iramu, and Robinson, who has had a prolific career in both printmaking and public artworks. Since then, the project has evolved into an intergenerational reflection of male and female approaches to carving traditions, informed by urban and Far North Queensland environmental responses to country and a shared practice in contemporary Torres Strait Islander printmaking.
Artist interview for the sustainable darkroom
Karel Doing Collaborates with Nature to Write with Plants, re.source published by The Sustainable Darkroom, July 2022
Claire Grant interviewed artist Karel Doing to discuss his experimental pytography process for re·source – the third publication from The Sustainable Darkroom. Featuring nearly 200 pages of essays, recipes, experiments, images, and research from a network of practitioners worldwide, re:source is their largest publication yet – and the most extensive collection of writing on sustainable photographic practice to date.
The experimental photographic technique Phytography was developed by artist Karel Doing, to generate a collaborative space for the expression of human/plant creativity. Like the clownfish that basks in the protection of its poisonous anemone home, or the oxpecker that rides on its zebra host’s back feasting on parasites, Phytography proposes a new form of mutualism (an ecological interaction between species where each benefits).
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