Claire Barclay is a visual artist recognised for producing large-scale sculptural installations created in response to specific contexts.  Her works are immersive sensory experiences that explore our interactions with materials and functionality, by combining formal elements that evoke thinking around the “psychological relationships between human beings and the objects that we live with and produce.”

In this exhibition Barclay includes a series of tactile sculptural environments, where large-scale forms, made predominantly from fabrics and metals, “suggest textile narratives and explore our complex relationships with cloth.”

Historical connections between the West of Scotland and Northern Ireland have become a focus while evolving the artworks.  More specifically, interactions and migrations of people due to work, trade, religion and colonisation, and how these relationships relate to textile production.  In particular, Ayrshire ‘whitework’ embroidery, linen cloth production, and indigenous dress have informed some of the formal and material choices within the sculptures.

Domestic, industrial and agricultural references are interwoven into ambiguous sculptural forms that explore the nature of human engagement in ‘making’ practices and our cultural and symbolic relationships with materials.

Taking inspiration from a range of reference points, including historical artefacts, museum collections, craft practices, methods and places of production, and anthropological perspectives, the work plays with upsetting conventional hierarchies and assumptions in relation to value and meaning of materials and forms.  Often the works indirectly question present day romanticisation and commodification of craft and heritage and provoke us to question our own relationship to these.

Visit https://themaclive.com/exhibition/claire-barclay-thrum for more details