Artist Statement
Alice’s art is one of excavation, using the evolutionary journey of the human species as inspiration for works including installation, ceramics, film, and photography. Her installations and ceramic objects are simultaneously ancient and contemporary, exploring enduring human conditions like fragility, longing, and defiance.
Situated within the tradition of feminist discourse, Clough’s work tells of her hopes and fears for humankind. Through it, she hopes to reveal moments of conformity and compliance while provoking the viewer to question their cultural constraints. Her hope is that people will connect deeply and authentically with themselves, each other, and the world we inhabit.
Clough’s work often has a ritualistic element, using placement and repetition to create museum-like inventories, or materialising honest and tender personal rites. In Tending, Clough cut her long hair off on Beltane – an ancient Celtic festival that marks the beginning of summer. She made a bowl from her hair and unfired burnished porcelain. The bowl was installed in a small woodshed. It was framed on either side by a life-size print of the artist before and after the haircut. On entering the earthy, dimly lit space, the viewer encountered the vulnerability of Clough’s physical body as well as a sense of reverence, and was invited to reflect on their own relationship with their body.
Her interest in the work of Werner Herzog and background in anthropology particularly inform Clough’s film and photography, which blur history, myth and ethnography to explore the nature of truth.
Alice Clough is an interdisciplinary artist, facilitator, researcher and lecturer with a background in archaeology, anthropology and spiritual ecology.
Education
2019 - Metáfora School of Studio Arts, Barcelona
2018 - Spiritual Ecology Leadership Training, St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace
2010 - MA Material & Visual Culture Studies, University College London
2008 - BA (Hons) Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge
Alice has 7 years experience of working as a university tutor, and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
She has presented work at conferences throughout the UK and Europe, including at CRAASH (University of Cambridge) and Glasgow School of Art.
Alice has experience of designing and delivering workshops for adults and children, in schools and in nature.
Publications
2019 Gestures of making: an exploration of material / body dialogue through art process. Co-written with Fo Hamblin. In conference proceedings of Tracing Gestures: The Art and Archaeology of Bodily Communication, held at University College London, 4-5th November 2014
2016 Make, mistake, journey: practice-led research and ways of learning. Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA-PGN, special edition. Co-written with Anna Piper
2011 Combating Urban Disengagement? Stickers as a form of street art. UCL Working Papers Series, Paper No. 09/2011