Bernard Clark,
When Darkness Falls, 2008, Giclee print
Exhibitions
Bernard Clark: Tattoo Portraits
Davies Foundation Gallery
14 January - 15 April 2012
Drawing on Bernard Clark's success as a first-order documentary photographer of ink culture, this solo exhibition features surreal composited portraits of tattooed subjects in landscape and architectural settings.
In the eighteen recent works featured in this exhibition, Clark has digitally inserted his extraordinary subjects into environments that highlight the stridency of their self-definition through markings. These transpositions, often to rustic or abandoned environments - many of which are in his home town of Kingston - are more than a form of retrieval on Clark's part. The uneasy disjunction of figure and ground emphasizes the vulnerability and insularity of his portrait subjects, enveloped as they are in the declarative and decorative gesture of their dramatic tattoos.
At a time when tattooing is a surging global phenomena, Clark's sensitive and at times playful displacements highlight the contemporary role of the body as a refuge of stable identity and personal expression.
In tandem with his award-winning work as a commercial photographer, Bernard Clark has cultivated an art practice focussing on social subcultures. Over the past decade, he has travelled widely in an exceptional project documenting skin art. His work has been featured in magazines such as Skin & Ink, in online galleries, and in his 2002 book with Bob Baxter, Tattoo Road Trip: Two Weeks in Samoa.
Jan Allen