About The Exhibition
Belfast Exposed are delighted to present ‘Snake’ by Clare Strand, a new body of work exploring a collection of images sourced from the artist’s extensive personal archive, recently published as ‘Girl Plays with Snake’ by MACK Books. Being realised as an exhibition for the first time, the project is a continuation of Strand’s ongoing engagement with the scrapbooks, magazines and photographs that she has been drawing together since her mid-teens.
This multi-dimensional exhibition presents photography, text and technology colluding together within the gallery space. Women and girls are pictured holding, playing with and gazing fondly at snakes, juxtaposed alongside automatic generated texts orchestrated by Strand, which touch on the absurd, the intimate, the erotic and the uncanny.
“The snake has been the subject of allegory and metaphor since biblical times, signifying eternity when holding its own tail; suggesting cunning and temptation to Eve; the agent of suicide for Cleopatra, and even the symbol of health and healing in the rod of Asclepius, the god of medicine. The snake can represent both good and evil, wisdom and cunning, rejuvenation and death, and of course sexuality and the phallus. Being engaged with photography for the last 20 years, it felt the right time to share these images”. Clare Strand, 2017
The Artists
Clare Strand
Siegfried Kracauer would recognise Strand as a fellow "Rag Picker”. She describes her working method as being like "rolling in the grass and seeing what you pick up on your jumper.” Strand’s constantly evolving practice brings together intensive research, deadpan humour and insights into popular culture, shifting from the mysterious and the absurd to understanding public obsessions, often via trickery and manipulation. Recent exhibited work includes machines to encourage entropy, web programmes, looped films, fairground stalls and intricate photographic constructions focusing on, subverting, reimagining and manipulating the medium’s origins.
Strand has had a number of international and national group and solo shows. Her work is held in the collections of Arts Council England; The National Collection; The British Council; The Folkwang Museum; The Unicredit Bank; The New York Library; The Victoria and Albert Museum; The Centre Pompidou; MoMA New York and the Mead museum. Publications include: Clare Strand Monograph published by Steidl (2007), Skirts Published by GOST (2013) and most recently Girl Plays with Snake published by MACK (2016). She is represented by Parrotta Contemporary Art - Stuttgart/Cologne.
Acknowledgements
'Snake' by Clare Strand is generously supported by Arts Council Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council.