Wounds Increase Me
There are words I have repeated
Revving in the background
Union would be annihilating
Pathway, habit, addiction, break
Loosen, open
The roof of love into heavens theatre
Baroque adjustments
I’m stuck on the word pathological, I’m tempted
Daughters of daughters
Splitting after follows
Insisting
Are you obsessed
With effort
Are we talking about choice
No communication between individuals but between atoms
Difference, actually, hating that word
To receive copies and make deviation
Playful and humorous or
Trying to compensate
Elaborate support system of straightness
Deviation is made hard
We are directed
Glass of water as a pop culture staple
My throat is dry but I’ll try
Unable to control part of the —
Repetition builds paths breaks paths
How love makes habits, how love breaks them, how love errs
Mere reflex
Someone called me moldable the other day
I was technically in charge
Mold-able charge
Love takes form or explodes form
How can that be cliché
I can leave sideways off the stairs
The flowers falling
What do you notice when you fall in love
Protecting is the antonym of
I would be thrilled if they were even beautiful
Clare is interested in how clichés can be repositioned, such that they may be encountered anew. Working with the mercurial medium of painting, she plays with different modes of mark-making, compositional relationships, and symbolic configurations in pursuit of a more careful understanding of creativity, love, and the incoherence that makes them.
Clare Longley is an artist based in Narrm/Melbourne. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne (2014) and has since graduated from the Master of Fine Art program at Monash University, Melbourne (2021), where she wrote a thesis titled Three Routes Through Painting the Cliché. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include Exhaust, or, Dagmar Bosma (NL) & Clare Longley, Flippy’s, Melbourne (2023); Garden series with boundaries, ReadingRoom (2020); Watch and thee, absent another, Bus Projects, Melbourne (2019); Adult Lullabies, Daine Singer, Melbourne (2017); and Thanks for Having Me, Blindside Gallery, Melbourne (2017). Curatorial projects include Smoke Screens, LON Gallery, Melbourne (2018); Massage Therapy, KINGS Artist-Run, Melbourne (2017); and We Make Memories, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne (2017). Selected group exhibitions include Potential Space, Kennard’s Self Storage Facility, Sydney (2019); MADA Now, Monash Art, Design & Architecture Gallery, Melbourne (2018); and The Wizard of Oz: An Updated Classic, Secret Project Robot, Brooklyn, NY (2017).