Clare Peake

About the work

I don’t really know why I do what I do. I think that this question, or perhaps it’s a feeling, is what underpins my practice. I often find this feeling of uncertainty is reflected in the geography of the landscape I am currently situated in. Long roads, open spaces, expansive horizons, big skies. I wonder too if this pondering also has something to do with growing up in a regional town and why I so often choose to engage in slow, repetitive processes within my work. I am currently residing in Broome (Western Australia) and as I continue to revisit the same works over and over within my practice, I find the circular nature of the weather cycles, and living on a peninsula with one road in and out, an apt metaphor for my practice. I forget time. I forget when things are started and they seem not to really finish either. I guess like the landscape, things do change over time but perhaps slowly, only in small amounts, just enough to record a little shift from here to there. 

Image courtesy of the artist.

About the artist

Clare Peake (b. 1984 Geraldton, WA) graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Art) from Curtin University in 2006 and completed postgraduate studies in Anthropology at the University of Western Australia in 2010. Clare was selected as a finalist in the 2017 Ramsay Art Prize (Art Gallery South Australia) and has contributed to a number of significant solo and group shows, notably, The National (2019) as well as recent exhibitions at sydenham international, Verge Gallery, Casula Powerhouse, Bus Projects and 7th Gallery.  Clare has also recently completed residencies at both the Jenni House in Whitehorse, Canada and Artspace, Sydney.

 

Throughout Peake practice is a continued interest in processes of unravelling, undoing, reforming and repeating as a means to understand and comprehend the world around her. These processes are also reflective of a state of mind, of feelings of uncertainty and the desire to make progress.