Meisterschüler*innen der HBK Braunschweig

After living and studying her Meisterschüler in Freie Kunst at HBK in Germany for one year, Clark presented her final graduate work at the Kunstverein Braunschweig. This exhibition’s playful works appear in the Kunstverein amongst an interactive horse backpack and fluorescent pink steel rods, stitching joy, colour and play into forms that refuse to be quiet. Clark refers to her process as “following the dopamine”, joyfully combining faux fur, beads, hot glue, embroidery, and nostalgic found objects in her ‘Sweetheart’ series. Alongside her mixed media heart works, she created a three-dimensional doodle using pink coated steel rods and silicone beads. In Clark’s work, cutesy and industrial meet like best friends, giggling and swapping secrets intimately understood by only a small few, but encountered as a bodily experience by many.

Through using “girly” symbols in the white cube gallery space (ponies, glitter and friendship bracelets) Clark insists on their seriousness, their resistance, their right to shimmer loudly. What looks like purely pop, playful fluff is also a soft riot: embroidery becomes armour, bows become banners, ponies have war cries. Moving from Melbourne to Braunschweig, Clark found a new language in the combination of kitsch, craft and mass production. Her sculptures don’t just sit pretty, they squeal, gossip, sparkle, and demand that joy itself be taken seriously.