Ellie Porter from Art360 Foundation speaks to Artist, Claire Barclay, about her archive and what legacy means to her. Art360 has worked with Claire since 2019 through the Art360 Scotland Programme which supports artists with the creation of archives to help preserve their life's work. The podcast is co-produced and edited by George Genn.

Find out more about our podcast Legacy & here and follow us @art360fdn

Claire Barclay is a Glasgow-based artist whose work is primarily sculptural site-specific installation. Her sculptures comprise vast assemblages of materials including machined steel, aluminium, fabric, glass, soot, engine grease, oil, honey, leather, suede, velvet, brass, woven wheat, ink, painted wood, and much more.

Each sculpture emerges from a mood rather than a specific intention. Organic and industrial materials sit side-by-side generating an atmosphere of ambiguity, oscillating between what Claire describes as the 'seductive and the unnerving'. Her work asks that we be there physically to embrace the sensory discomfort of an encounter with material out of context. Here these materials do not serve us as functional or decorative. We can see and sense sculpture as equal, different or maybe superior.

Claire Barclay has participated in numerous group, solo exhibitions, commissions and residencies in the UK and internationally since the 1990s after graduating from Glasgow School of Art's Department of Environmental Art in 1990 and then completing an MA in 1993.

Recent exhibitions include TENUITY (Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, 2021), SKIFFING (Edinburgh College of Art, 2019), DEEP SPOILS (Mission Gallery, Swansea, 2018), YIELD POINT (Tramway, Glasgow, 2017). You can read more about Claire's work here: https://www.clairebarclay.net/

RSS Image credit: Trappings, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 2014, wood, wool, printed fabric, leather, ceramic, machined brass, honey, feathers © Claire Barclay. Photography: John McKenzie.