Claire Barrow
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Claire Barrow
TOMBSTONE FREEWAY
ft. Daisy Davidson: “A Visual History of Online Subculture and Cursed Images” a short film presentation commissioned for the exhibition
The Koppel Project, 1 Adelaide Rd, Camden, NW3 3QE (opposite Chalk Farm Station)
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Open, 12 - 6 PM
Friday 22nd March
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Friday 12th April (closes at 5pm)
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What are you most afraid of?
To be unloved for eternity suffering in your own mental wasp nest?
You're on The Road to Lame!
My biggest fear in life is love, because what happens afterwards…Brazen Bull, Thumbscrew, Rat!
Being perpetually trapped in the dark souls universe not being able to die and attacked by a hydra for the rest of eternity.
Excerpt from Whitby Gothic, 2024, audio track within the sculpture
Barrow's latest exhibition is a collection of new work combining installation, sculpture and works on paper. It follows on from her 2023 show Victim of Cosmetics, which saw large multi-media paintings and sculptures presented in an old office space, exploring the materiality and ethics of the intersection between personal self-image, the commercial beauty industry and the patterns of its deep entrenchment in our daily needs and identities. She again stares into the endless void of consumerist marketing's successful infiltration of our modern-day identities, this time focusing on the commodification of alternative subcultures and modern day fears.
The roots of Barrow’s new body of work dig deep into the soil of aggressive capitalism and the mythmaking advertising practices that shaped the world the millennial generation grew into. Objects, music, and culture that held profound meaning to many were crafted in the crucible of hyper-individualism, exemplified by the 2000s emo and scene subcultures. Teenage fear, anxiety, isolation and rebellion were wrapped up in Halloween branding with faux-Tim Burton flourishes.
Tombstone Freeway, and Barrow's studio, are situated close to the edge of Camden Market, where alternative subcultural tropes have traditionally come to be commodified and integrated into London’s tourist economy.
The gallery is adorned with tattered remnants of Laura Ashley wallpaper, windows draped in an assortment of torn velvets, tulles, and rubber fabrics, and dressed with an 1980s Western Ikebana floral arrangement. Wooden boards haphazardly conceal one set of windows, and Halloween window decals are collaged into floral corner flourishes. The ambiance recalls a 'scare ride' queuing area, meant to lightly entertain before the main attraction. The main ride will begin in the cupboard, which is now locked. During the Private View, however, this cupboard was briefly accessible, housing a masked actor providing jump scares and denying access to inquisitive guests.
The exhibition features a collection of thirteen artworks, all created within the last year and incorporating found objects amassed over Barrow’s lifetime. Among them are three mixed-media figurative sculptures and ten works of drawings on paper, each adorned with frames fashioned from painted metal, plastic, and silicone.
Throughout her drawing and sculpture, Barrow investigates the intersection of contemporary spirituality and gothic aesthetics, exemplified in works such as Third Eye Opened, 2024 (35.5x40x10cm). Here, a youth grasps a knife with both hands, a wound gushing blood from their forehead (the third eye). Expressive cursive marks, a mixture of cartoonish styles, and textual elements combine in the drawings, with subjects spanning fantasy torture devices to reanimated E-girls.
Medusa, 2024 (120x100x40cm) perches under the arched window of the show, sphinx-like, and is comprised of moulded plastic, cement, expanding foam, costume pearls and a rhinestone garter belt, synthetic hair, creased polyester satin, a recycled plastic bag bearing the inscription ‘Botched: By Nature’, paint, hosiery, metal piercing, sports marker cone, wadding, and a bluetooth speaker concealed inside its rectum.
Both Medusa and Whitby Gothic feature synthesised spoken word audio that emanates out from orifices - each delivering morbid monologues scripted, in part, from public submissions to the Tombstone Freeway online guestbook; which asked: What is your biggest fear?
Chris, Alex, Sam, Luke, 2024 (187x70x30cm) derives its title from iconic figures of the MySpace Scene era affectionately known as the 'Scene Kings,' with a special nod to Chris Dakota and his unmistakable hairstyle, which both captivated admirers and was mocked by haters. Standing tall, and leaning forwards into the gallery, reminiscent of the prescribed angle of early online selfies. The figure’s head is cast in rubber and supported by expanding foam. The rest of the sculpture is composed of metal and wood, resin, sheepskin, found objects in plastic, cement, glass, paper, string, synthetic hair, a 1980s Avon box, and woven cotton on a metal base.
For the artist, silver metal recalls medical objects, torture devices, weapons, jewellery, and ties in alternative culture connotations.
Whitby Gothic, 2024 (60x103x10cm) takes its title from the North East English port town close to Barrow’s childhood home, immortalised in Bram Stoker's Dracula novel. Displayed within her open coffin, her blue tongue twice pierced with grenade and razorblade charms, a plastic garlic and feather between her large breasts, and blue silicone icing covering her mask - a reflection on the themes of victimhood and macabre allure shared by the fields of body modification and plastic surgery, and the wider canon of Gothic Literature.
A VISUAL HISTORY OF ONLINE SUBCULTURE & CURSED IMAGES BY DAISY DAVIDSON
As a special addition, the exhibition features a new commissioned film (runtime 7:19 minutes) by archivist and documentarian Daisy Davidson, entitled A Visual History of Online Subculture & Cursed Images, shown on their own 90s pink flatscreen TV displayed on wooden boards framing the windows of the exhibition and crudely taped wires hanging down from it.
"Online alternative subculture has been prevalent since the beginnings of the internet, from obscure forums to hyper specific fan pages there has always been a space to consume counter culture online. Through this visual essay I have documented my own journey through these spaces over the years of online interaction, exploring this through found images.” - Daisy Davidson
Bio: Daisy Davidson is a documentarian, archivist, and stylist with a focus on internet imagery from the '90s to the 2010s, Japanese fashion, and alternative subcultures. Their practice involves photographing and documenting street fashion in London, particularly around Camden, and collecting found imagery from internet cultures past, which they share on their popular Instagram account, @hysteric.fashion. Davidson has released three street style zines under the title Hysteric Snaps and more recently, Hysteric Rooms, which documents the subjects in their bedrooms. These works are available at Tender Books, Heaven and Waste amongst others.
Bio: Claire Barrow, b. 1990, is a London-based artist originally from Yarm, Stockton-on-Tees. She studied Fashion Design at The Northern School of Art and University of Westminster, graduating in 2012 and made her London Fashion Week debut the same year as part of Fashion East. Barrow’s multifaceted practice moved naturally towards making art as her sole practice in 2018. While fascinated by the power of fashion – she continues to produce occasional collections of clothing on her own terms – under the title of Xtreme Sports, an extension of her art practice.
Her recent work explores collective and personal experience using a variety of media to create parallel pop-cultural realms, characters, and narratives that reflect the obsessions of our society. Her recent projects play with internet culture and modern consciousness, depicting fevered visions in semi-random markings, time distortions, and out-of-scale proportions. Disassembled kitsch objects are reformed into unsettling creatures, reflecting her fascination with punk commodification and horror films. Immersed in these obsessions, the viewer swims between levels of social and autobiographical narratives, recognising glimmers of their own experience in resin-dripped surfaces and broken mirrors.
Barrow has had solo exhibitions at Fieldworks, London (Victim of Cosmetics, 2022), Dinner Party Gallery, London (Pipe 2021), Soft Opening (Pig Latin Library, 2018) and The New St Ives School (The Birth of Another Individual, 2020) as part of a six week residency. She has also participated in group shows across the UK and internationally such as: Rebel: 30 Years of British Fashion at The Design Museum, London (2023), Scraper, Most Dismal Swamp on KW Institute Digital, Berlin (2023), There's Nothing New Under The Sun, Lewisham Arthouse, London (2023), *fathers chariot/THE FALL, Council+, Berlin (2023), Liminal Bridges at Trauma Bar, Berlin (2022), Found & Lost, Zero Fold (2021), Cologne, Doing Youth at Gegenwart, Hamburg, Parasites at Projektraum im Kunstwerk, Cologne (2021), Correspondence at The Residence Gallery, London (2020), Year of the Pig at Souvenir, Berlin (2019), Real Time // Offline, SADE, Los Angeles (2019), Run-off, Exhaust and Other Pressures, Big Medium, Texas (2017), North: Fashioning Identity, Somerset House, London (2017), Fish Wifes, Shoot The Lobster at Paramount Ranch in Los Angeles (2016) and Utopian Bodies, Liljevalchs, Stockholm (2015).
sales enquiries studio@clairebarrow.co.uk
press art.hax@thekoppelproject.co.uk
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Welcome! Move around by clicking points on the floor, and drag or swipe to look around. Click objects to interact with them.
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