For over four decades, Tony Clark’s painting practice has merged a deep appreciation for art history with a desire to push beyond the traditional confines of prescribed mediums. Known for landscape paintings that both subvert and celebrate the genre, he has turned his attention to sculpture—or the idea of it—in a major career retrospective at Buxton Contemporary.
“The show is called Unsculpted, which is more or less a made-up word, but it seemed appropriate to describe a lot of work that I’ve done over many years, from very early on, that reference sculpture in some way,” says Clark. The deep fascination with sculpture was always there, just waiting for the pieces to be put together. “You don’t get a sense of the continuity of things when you’re doing them. I’m surprised at the level of continuity there is. You can see the threads that link them all up.”
You won’t find Clark switching mediums for the show, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any sculptures in Unsculpted. He collaborated with long-time friend Joanne Ritson, who has created 3D sculptural objects out of his 2D paintings and drawings. He describes the singular side of his painted sculptures, and how, “it was up to her to invent the other three sides, so to speak, which is exactly what she did,” adding that “she turned them into something of her own.”
Along with the sculpture-focused works are sections of paintings referencing architecture and theatre design. “I love painting for painting’s sake, but I’ve [also] always loved this idea of a painting that is a design for something else,” says Clark. “Painting is a vehicle to do all sorts of things with ideas.”
Tony Clark: Unsculpted
Buxton Contemporary
On now—1 June
This article was originally published in the January/February 2025 print issue of Art Guide Australia.
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