PRESS RELEASE

Galería Out of Africa

Carrer Major, 7 - Carrer Nou - 08870 Sitges (Barcelona) – España

www.galeria-out-of-africa.com - sorella@galeria-out-of-africa.com - Tel: +34 618 356 351

B R U C E C L A R K E UNITED KINGDOM/SOUTH AFRICA – PAINTING/COLLAGE

« HUMANITIES »

EXHIBITION from 20/6/14 to 31/8/2014

SITGES (BARCELONA)

H u m a n i t i e s

Bruce Clarke – Voices on the Street – 2013 - 50cm H x 60cm W –

watercolour/collage

Bruce Clarke – United Kingdom/South Africa – Painter

and photographer

Running from June 20 -August 31, 2014 Out of Africa gallery of Sitges (Barcelona) has the pleasure to present « Humanities », an exhibition of recent work by artist Bruce Clarke (United Kingdom - South Africa). The exhibit displays people and references that do not tell us what we should do but rather what they do or have done to become human again.

Painter and photographer, art ist Bruce Clarke was born in London in 1959 of South African parents exiled for their anti-apartheid political activity. Following studies in Fine Art at Leeds University, Clarke settled in Paris, which became his base from which to create and reflect upon the world. His art is about contemporary history; it deconstructs ways of thinking and representations by society in order to stimulate the viewer to reflect upon the world today.

Opening Saturday, June 28th at 8.00pm with the participation of the artist, tradicional South-African music and a cava cocktail will be served at the vernissage.

Meet and Greet Book Signing with Bruce Clarke featuring publications "Avec Bruce Clarke" and "Dominations" on Friday 27th from 7-8pm, Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th of June from 1-2pm.

Bruce Clarke, his artistic approach

Starting with fragments, torn from newspapers, posters, Clarke relates words and colours. Words and images are integrated and recomposed on the canvas. Collage elements are treated as unique, individual entities, which are then dunked, covered, coated in order to thicken and make the surface opaque prior to it resurfacing anew, in the form of a great palimpsest.

Bruce Clarke - La Chute – 2013 – 70cm H x 50cm W - watercolour/collage

Bruce Clarke, art and commitment Clarke's approach as an artist is already a commitment in itself, a critical commentary about the world. With Bruce Clarke, artistic work is inseparable from political militancy.

An important figure of the anti-apartheid movement in France, upon his arrival in Paris, Bruce becomes one of the main players in the mobilization of French public opinion against the regime of racial separation in South Africa.

In France he is also committed to campaigning for the cause of illegal immigrants as well as raising awareness of the situation in Rwanda. When Nelson Mandela came to power in South Africa, the Tutsi Genocide was happening in Rwanda. Between April and July 1994, more than one million people were exterminated because their national identity cards or facial characteristics identified them as “Tutsi”. Over the course of less than one hundred days, men, women, children and the elderly were massacred with machetes, clubs, rifle butts, guns, grenades, drowned or burnt alive in towns, in the hills and in churches. In close contact with the Rwandan community living in Europe, Bruce Clarke travels to Rwanda a few weeks after the genocide to carry out a photo essay. Further to the request made by survivors of the slaughter, in the year 2000 on the site of a massacre close to Kigali, he begins creating the memorial "Le Jardin de la Mémoire", a monumental installation sponsored by civil society, Rwandan institutions and the UNESCO.

On the invitation of the General Council of Guadeloupe, in 2002 he presents the exhibition "Fragments of Tomorrow's History" on the links between slavery, colonialism and globalization. In 2006, his book "Dominations" is published by Homnisphères.

Bruce Clarke – With Propaganda - 2012 – 50cm H x 65cm W – Acrylic & collage

Bruce Clarke – Precarious lives – 2012 – 130cm H x 170cm W – acrylic/collage

Bruce Clarke – Body Politics – 2012 – 130cm H x 170cm W – acrylic/collage

Bruce Clarke – Distant Bodies – 2013 – 130cm H x 170cm W – Acrylic & collage

Standing Men

In 2014, twenty years after the Rwandan genocide, Bruce Clarke and the Collective for the Standing Men pay homage to the victims with paintings of men, women and children, majestic and dignified, larger than life, painted at memorial sites in Rwanda and hung in other symbolic locations around the world.

Within the framework of the Sitges Art WE held on the 26th, 27th, 28th and 29th of June and organised by the "Asociación de Galerías de Arte de Sitges", Out of Africa gallery will hang a 6m x 1.5m Standing Men canvas from the rock wall below the classic landmark that is the Sitges church. Exhibited in this public and symbolic space, this individual, a silent witness, will remind us that genocide is a crime against humanity.

Art against oblivion Bruce Clarke's work does not provide any answers, yet it prompts the viewer to ask questions. This outstanding ability to question the viewer, a quality displayed by Bruce's canvases, is perhaps the best remedy against amnesia. They are building blocks in the construction of memory and sometimes, years later, they are the only reminder of an event. "It is a work of art, Picasso's Guernica, that reminds us today, more than seventy years later of the tragedy of this small Basque village and not newspapers nor scholarly history textbooks." Bruce Clarke

For more information, kindly contact:

Sorella Acosta

sorella@galeria-out-of-africa.com +34 618 356 351

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