Clancy Martin

NOD Artist Residency

Perth, WA

April 24 2022

Clancy Martin’s work suggests a breakdown of the distinction between objects and matter. Structures are subjected to entropic forces. Powder is utilised as a means of directing mass away from solids. Heaps of flour replace plinths, sculptures and frames. The Gallery is breaking down. Time is finding a way in.

Utilising reflective surfaces, portals are created within Clancy's installations. Reflections catch distorted equivalents of the small geologies within the space. Mounds of powdered material become mountain ranges, canyons, and archipelagos. Captured in reflections, small worlds intrude into the gallery. These represent an escape from the static world of the white cube. I am passing through.

Birds are delicate creatures. They are small, fragile, fleeting. Within Clancy's work birds tower over the monochrome, sculptural landscapes of the larger installation. In this world, birds are no longer a part of the miniature. Either the world above them has been erased, or they are giants, towering over a tiny landscape. I am the wrong shape.

Outside of a human sense of time what we think of an object might be thought of as a temporary shape in an ongoing explosion of matter or, at the opposite end of the scale, as a static monolith, forever unchanging. Clancy's work creates a confrontation with these questions. I am looking at a marble sculpture, disintegrated. I am flying over a strange geology. I am a disproportioned traveller moving between worlds.

Clancy creates tiny worlds. They make a landscape from monochrome matter. Tectonic forces are recreated within the processes of shaping and scraping. Heaps of powder mimic mountains. The exposed gallery floor becomes oceanic. Time is sped up, slowed down, distorted, made strange. Small creatures become giants. All of this is captured and warped within reflections. None of this is for me, I am just passing through. I am out synch, the wrong size. I am bearing witness to a moment.

— Kieron Broadhurst