Claire Barclay: Shadow Spans

About

Glasgow-based artist Claire Barclay is a leading figure in a generation of young sculptors who have re-engaged with materials and the crafts of making art. Shadow Spans is an installation that responds to the architecture of Gallery 2 and its environs. With its bare brick walls and concrete floor, Barclay imagines it as a space turned outside in. The architectural stew of the East End with its dark cobbled alleyways, Huguenot houses or 1960s Brutalist concrete towers are refracted into her sculptures. She uses the rectangles formed by doors and windows as an armature for fabrics and objects. Top hats, the fingers of gloves, bird cages and glinting, fetishistic metal objects give clues to lives behind closed doors. Barclay has created a complex space for peering around corners and for being observed. From November, Shadow Spans will be animated by dance performances conceived in response to her work by some of London's most outstanding choreographers including the Siobhan Davies Company, Henrietta Hale and Will Tuckett.