Claire Nichols

nicholsclaire[at]gmail[dot]com

X

  • performances

    Performance documents are accessible on Vimeo: www.vimeo.com/user49554373

  • biography

    Emerging from a deep interest in materiality and collaboration, Claire Nichols creates sculptural eco-systems which negotiate the codes and rhythms of chosen sites, and generate new performative and inter-disciplinary encounters. Initiated during an artist residency at the Florence Trust, London, in 2017, Nichols has been developing an ongoing series entitled Variations through which she creates live sculptural compositions. Through the series, she sheds a theatrical light on the process of sculptural construction, bringing it into the space of performance and exhibition. Found and fabricated materials are brought together in a continuous process of making and remaking, whilst drawings and photographs archive related moments and ideas and re-enter the scene as prints on fabric. Operating more like organisms than static installations, the resulting Variations are living systems that are open to changes of structure, material and balance, all according to the tempo of improvised movement.

     

    Adding a new dimension to her sculptural investigations, and speaking to their continuously shifting nature, Nichols has initiated a series of music and movement collaborations in London and in Mumbai. Her evolving compositions with found objects become sheet music to be played by musicians or a score to be interpreted through movement. She is interested in the blurring of disciplinary boundaries and the attempted sharing of tacit forms of knowledge as cross-disciplinary constellations are created, collapsed and rebuilt anew.

     

    Solo exhibitions include Enclave Lab, London (2017); Barbican Arts Group Trust, London (2018); Space 118, Mumbai (2020) and Method Art Space, Mumbai (forthcoming, 2021). Group exhibitions include David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Art on the Underground, London; Banner Repeater, London; Centre Cultural la Mercè, Girona; and Despina, Rio de Janeiro. Residencies include Space 118, Mumbai; Florence Trust, London; FormContent, London; Despina, Rio de Janeiro; and Hangar, Barcelona (forthcoming, 2020). Nichols is Course Leader for the BA Fine Art Study Abroad Programme at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

  • cv

    Education

     

    2008–2010

    MFA, Goldsmiths College, University of London

     

    2003–2006

    BFA, Ruskin, University of Oxford

     

     

    Selected Exhibitions and Performances

    2021

    Solo Show, Method Art Space, Mumbai

     

    2020

    Space 118 Variations, performance with dancer Vaidehi Patel and classical guitarist Abhinav Saxena, Space 118, Mumbai

    2018
    BAM-BOO,
    Solo Show, ArtWorks Project Space, Barbican Arts Group Trust, London

     

    2017

    Barbican Arts Group Trust Open: Main Prize winner selected by Florence Peake and Tai Shani, ArtWorks Project Space, London

     

    The arebyte Variations, performance for Concertina by Richard Wentworth and APPARATA, arebyte Gallery, London

     

    Summer Exhibition, Florence Trust, London

     

    The Enclave Variations, Solo Performance Event curated by Sol Polo, Enclave Lab, London

     

    Winter Open, Florence Trust, London

     

    2016

    Lacuna, performance with Jennifer Taylor, Despina, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

     

    Concrete Circle, performances, Two Hotel, Bahia, Brazil

     

    2015

    Espaços de Vidro, residency exhibition, Despina, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

     

    Sketchy Remarks, group exhibition, Floating Island, London

     

    2014

    Pole Pole, group exhibition curated by artist Laura Wilson, Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

     

    2013

    Containing the Possible, curated with Carsten Recksik, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London

     

    2012

    One Thing Leads To Another, Jubilee Line Commissions, Art on the Underground, London

     

    The Apocralypse, online at www.itlookedlikeatheatre.co.uk, curated by artist Barry Sykes

     

    2011

    f ig.3: I don’t know what to say, group exhibition curated by Anca Rujoiu and Stef Hirsch, David Roberts Art Foundation, London

     

    The Diagram: Blackboard Series, SPACE, London, touring to Torna, Istanbul

     

    Convergence: Literary Art Exhibitions, group exhibition, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast

     

    2009–11

    The Empty Gallery Interviews, David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Limoncello, London; Gasworks, London; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Art House Foundation, London; and Plymouth Arts Centre

     

    2010

    Digestives, radio series, Resonance FM

     

    London Art Book Fair, Whitechapel, London

     

    New York Art Book Fair, PS1, New York

     

    the diagram, Banner Repeater, London

     

    the diagram, FormContent, London

     

    2009

    Contested Ground, group exhibition, Zabludowicz Collection, London

     

     

    Residencies

     

    2020

    Hangar, Barcelona (Forthcoming)

     

    Space 118, Mumbai

    2016–17

    Florence Trust, London

     

    2016

    Two Hotel, Bahia, Brazil

     

    2015

    Despina, Rio de Janeiro. Brazil

     

    Floating Island, London

     

    2010

    FormContent, London

     

    2008

    Kala Art Institute, Berkeley CA, USA

     

     

    Collections

     

    Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, University of London

     

    Special Collections, Chelsea College of Art & Design

  • text (EN)

    Residency Catalogue, Florence Trust, London, 2017

    By Ashlee Conery

     

    The cycle of making, collapsing and exhibiting forms the core of Claire Nichols’ practice. Interested in the designed sites of studio and gallery spaces, she begins with the existing material from these physical, temporal and hypothetical environments. During her residency at Despina, in Rio de Janeiro, Nichols began to consider her position within this short-lived space of production and display. Inhabiting the city and residency as an observer attuned to the rhythms of transitory materials, of f-cuts or refuse, her work began to engage with temporality and ‘thingness’, contradicting methodologically the expected outcomes or ‘use of space’ within such an environment. An exercise she has continued at the Florence Trust, Nichols began by taking down the walls of her studio, and gathering the discarded matter of the place, and its past and present inhabitants.

     

    Over the course of these two occupancies, her exploration of ‘thingness’ has involved exchanges with estranged bits of glass and fabric, as well as overlooked masonry patterns in a public square. They become notes or gestures read by dancers and musicians whom Nichols invites to engage with them as they would sheet music or stage direction. As her ‘inviting’ and ‘borrowing’ becomes routine to her fellow residents, things appear within her space that she did not select, but which are thought to belong with her. Without diminishing her unilateral position within the composition, she gives agency to the objects within her environment by inviting this constellation of actants. Periodically Nichols takes down, removes or paints sections, accepting the outcome of intersections along the way. Describing the work as an organism, rather than a sculpture or installation, she poignantly evades a clear ending. Living and developing, the precarious balances erected and exchanged within the space seem to mirror the delicate ecosystem of the residency. The work is, as the artist, in constant evolution. Existing beyond brief performances or f ixed bodies, within unexpected and ongoing collaborations with other artists, materials or geographies, that grow organically.

     

    Small books of drawings that behave more like dialogue than document, between her and her assemblages, sit quietly at the border. A site for articulating and exploring her ideas around improvisation, she treats the space of the book as an echo of her interventions, each folio a chamber reverberating and rif f ing on traces of the marks made on the previous pages.

  • text (PT)

    Espaços de Vidro, Despina, Rio de Janeiro, 2017

    By Dr Carla Hermann

     

    A inglesa Claire Nichols trabalha as sutilezas das relações que ocorrem no cubo branco. Na instalação que apresenta ao f im de um mês de residência no Rio de Janeiro, Claire investiga a performatividade dos objetos e do espaço institucional. Para isso, expõe a vulnerabilidade das obras, seja pela materialidade que usa para construí-los, seja pela relação que eles estabelecem com as pessoas. “O observador está ciente de estar em uma relação indeterminada, aberta – e imprecisa – sujeito ao objeto impassível sobre a parede ou o chão”, nos diz Michael Fried, em seu ensaio “Arte e Objetividade”, de 1967. Em análise da natureza do trabalho minimalista, o autor nos diz que a experiência não ocorre mais no interior da obra, e sim na situação construída pelo objeto. É ele que, posicionado no espaço, cria uma situação que só pode existir com o espectador, e por isso, precisa incluí-lo.

     

    O trabalho de Claire é composto por retângulos de vidros f inos apoiados uns nos outros. Cubos de cimento, que permanecem no limiar entre a mera funcionalidade e a escolha estética – seriam formas pré-fabricadas usadas para f ins construtivos ou seriam cubos perfeitos de cor neutra produzidos em série para marcar a presença da forma? Os únicos artefatos a f igurar são simples copos e calços de porta em madeira, escolhidos por suas geometrias e possibilidades de ref lexos e angulações. A crueza material não quer dizer que a materialidade não importa –, ao contrário, são as características físicas que justif icam sua presença na obra. O vidro cria duplos, ao mesmo tempo em que separa o espaço sem criar uma barreira visível. A solidez opaca dos cubos de cimento contrasta com a transparência das lâminas quebradas e ou de pontas expostas. E esses pequenos perigos dão a percepção de que esses objetos são, tal como as pessoas que caminham por entre eles, vivos.

     

    É na ação que o trabalho acontece, nos ref lexos da interação, nas geometrias das sombras percebidas com a movimentação do corpo no espaço. A delicadeza da instalação acompanha a fragilidade do estatuto do objeto artístico, aquela que nos faz af irmar que tudo que está exposto aqui é arte. Se estivessem em outro local, esses arranjos seriam descartes. Eles existem e sobrevivem pela experiência do público e pelos registros feitos disso. São os códigos da galeria, como este, legitimadores dos trabalhos e do discurso, que interessam a Claire Nichols.

Claire Nichols

nicholsclaire[at]gmail[dot]com

X

  • Performances

    Performance documents are accessible on Vimeo: www.vimeo.com/user49554373

  • biography

    Emerging from a deep interest in materiality and collaboration, Claire Nichols creates sculptural eco-systems which negotiate the codes and rhythms of chosen sites, and generate new performative and inter-disciplinary encounters. Initiated during an artist residency at the Florence Trust, London, in 2017, Nichols has been developing an ongoing series entitled Variations through which she creates live sculptural compositions. Through the series, she sheds a theatrical light on the process of sculptural construction, bringing it into the space of performance and exhibition. Found and fabricated materials are brought together in a continuous process of making and remaking, whilst drawings and photographs archive related moments and ideas and re-enter the scene as prints on fabric. Operating more like organisms than static installations, the resulting Variations are living systems that are open to changes of structure, material and balance, all according to the tempo of improvised movement.

     

    Adding a new dimension to her sculptural investigations, and speaking to their continuously shifting nature, Nichols has initiated a series of music and movement collaborations in London and in Mumbai. Her evolving compositions with found objects become sheet music to be played by musicians or a score to be interpreted through movement. She is interested in the blurring of disciplinary boundaries and the attempted sharing of tacit forms of knowledge as cross-disciplinary constellations are created, collapsed and rebuilt anew.

     

    Solo exhibitions include Enclave Lab, London (2017); Barbican Arts Group Trust, London (2018); Space 118, Mumbai (2020) and Method Art Space, Mumbai (forthcoming, 2021). Group exhibitions include David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Art on the Underground, London; Banner Repeater, London; Centre Cultural la Mercè, Girona; and Despina, Rio de Janeiro. Residencies include Space 118, Mumbai; Florence Trust, London; FormContent, London; Despina, Rio de Janeiro; and Hangar, Barcelona (forthcoming, 2020). Nichols is Course Leader for the BA Fine Art Study Abroad Programme at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

  • cv

    Education

     

    2008–2010

    MFA, Goldsmiths College, University of London

     

    2003–2006

    BFA, Ruskin, University of Oxford

     

     

    Selected Exhibitions and Performances

     

    2021

    Solo Show, Method Art Space, Mumbai

     

    2020

    Space 118 Variations, performance with dancer Vaidehi Patel and classical guitarist Abhinav Saxena, Space 118, Mumbai

    2018
    BAM-BOO,
    Solo Show, ArtWorks Project Space, Barbican Arts Group Trust, London

     

    2017

    Barbican Arts Group Trust Open: Main Prize winner selected by Florence Peake and Tai Shani, ArtWorks Project Space, London

     

    The arebyte Variations, performance for Concertina by Richard Wentworth and APPARATA, arebyte Gallery, London

     

    Summer Exhibition, Florence Trust, London

     

    The Enclave Variations, Solo Performance Event curated by Sol Polo, Enclave Lab, London

     

    Winter Open, Florence Trust, London

     

    2016

    Lacuna, performance with Jennifer Taylor, Despina, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

     

    Concrete Circle, performances, Two Hotel, Bahia, Brazil

     

    2015

    Espaços de Vidro, residency exhibition, Despina, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

     

    Sketchy Remarks, group exhibition, Floating Island, London

     

    2014

    Pole Pole, group exhibition curated by artist Laura Wilson, Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

     

    2013

    Containing the Possible, curated with Carsten Recksik, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London

     

    2012

    One Thing Leads To Another, Jubilee Line Commissions, Art on the Underground, London

     

    The Apocralypse, online at www.itlookedlikeatheatre.co.uk, curated by artist Barry Sykes

     

    2011

    f ig.3: I don’t know what to say, group exhibition curated by Anca Rujoiu and Stef Hirsch, David Roberts Art Foundation, London

     

    The Diagram: Blackboard Series, SPACE, London, touring to Torna, Istanbul

     

    Convergence: Literary Art Exhibitions, group exhibition, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast

     

    2009–11

    The Empty Gallery Interviews, David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Limoncello, London; Gasworks, London; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Art House Foundation, London; and Plymouth Arts Centre

     

    2010

    Digestives, radio series, Resonance FM

     

    London Art Book Fair, Whitechapel, London

     

    New York Art Book Fair, PS1, New York

     

    the diagram, Banner Repeater, London

     

    the diagram, FormContent, London

     

    2009

    Contested Ground, group exhibition, Zabludowicz Collection, London

     

     

    Residencies

     

    2020

    Hangar, Barcelona (Forthcoming)

     

    Space 118, Mumbai

    2016–17

    Florence Trust, London

     

    2016

    Two Hotel, Bahia, Brazil

     

    2015

    Despina, Rio de Janeiro. Brazil

     

    Floating Island, London

     

    2010

    FormContent, London

     

    2008

    Kala Art Institute, Berkeley CA, USA

     

     

    Collections

     

    Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, University of London

     

    Special Collections, Chelsea College of Art & Design

  • text (EN)

    Residency Catalogue, Florence Trust, London, 2017

    By Ashlee Conery

     

    The cycle of making, collapsing and exhibiting forms the core of Claire Nichols’ practice. Interested in the designed sites of studio and gallery spaces, she begins with the existing material from these physical, temporal and hypothetical environments. During her residency at Despina, in Rio de Janeiro, Nichols began to consider her position within this short-lived space of production and display. Inhabiting the city and residency as an observer attuned to the rhythms of transitory materials, of f-cuts or refuse, her work began to engage with temporality and ‘thingness’, contradicting methodologically the expected outcomes or ‘use of space’ within such an environment. An exercise she has continued at the Florence Trust, Nichols began by taking down the walls of her studio, and gathering the discarded matter of the place, and its past and present inhabitants.

     

    Over the course of these two occupancies, her exploration of ‘thingness’ has involved exchanges with estranged bits of glass and fabric, as well as overlooked masonry patterns in a public square. They become notes or gestures read by dancers and musicians whom Nichols invites to engage with them as they would sheet music or stage direction. As her ‘inviting’ and ‘borrowing’ becomes routine to her fellow residents, things appear within her space that she did not select, but which are thought to belong with her. Without diminishing her unilateral position within the composition, she gives agency to the objects within her environment by inviting this constellation of actants. Periodically Nichols takes down, removes or paints sections, accepting the outcome of intersections along the way. Describing the work as an organism, rather than a sculpture or installation, she poignantly evades a clear ending. Living and developing, the precarious balances erected and exchanged within the space seem to mirror the delicate ecosystem of the residency. The work is, as the artist, in constant evolution. Existing beyond brief performances or f ixed bodies, within unexpected and ongoing collaborations with other artists, materials or geographies, that grow organically.

     

    Small books of drawings that behave more like dialogue than document, between her and her assemblages, sit quietly at the border. A site for articulating and exploring her ideas around improvisation, she treats the space of the book as an echo of her interventions, each folio a chamber reverberating and rif f ing on traces of the marks made on the previous pages.

  • text (PT)

    Espaços de Vidro, Despina, Rio de Janeiro, 2017

    By Dr Carla Hermann

     

    A inglesa Claire Nichols trabalha as sutilezas das relações que ocorrem no cubo branco. Na instalação que apresenta ao f im de um mês de residência no Rio de Janeiro, Claire investiga a performatividade dos objetos e do espaço institucional. Para isso, expõe a vulnerabilidade das obras, seja pela materialidade que usa para construí-los, seja pela relação que eles estabelecem com as pessoas. “O observador está ciente de estar em uma relação indeterminada, aberta – e imprecisa – sujeito ao objeto impassível sobre a parede ou o chão”, nos diz Michael Fried, em seu ensaio “Arte e Objetividade”, de 1967. Em análise da natureza do trabalho minimalista, o autor nos diz que a experiência não ocorre mais no interior da obra, e sim na situação construída pelo objeto. É ele que, posicionado no espaço, cria uma situação que só pode existir com o espectador, e por isso, precisa incluí-lo.

     

    O trabalho de Claire é composto por retângulos de vidros f inos apoiados uns nos outros. Cubos de cimento, que permanecem no limiar entre a mera funcionalidade e a escolha estética – seriam formas pré-fabricadas usadas para f ins construtivos ou seriam cubos perfeitos de cor neutra produzidos em série para marcar a presença da forma? Os únicos artefatos a f igurar são simples copos e calços de porta em madeira, escolhidos por suas geometrias e possibilidades de ref lexos e angulações. A crueza material não quer dizer que a materialidade não importa –, ao contrário, são as características físicas que justif icam sua presença na obra. O vidro cria duplos, ao mesmo tempo em que separa o espaço sem criar uma barreira visível. A solidez opaca dos cubos de cimento contrasta com a transparência das lâminas quebradas e ou de pontas expostas. E esses pequenos perigos dão a percepção de que esses objetos são, tal como as pessoas que caminham por entre eles, vivos.

     

    É na ação que o trabalho acontece, nos ref lexos da interação, nas geometrias das sombras percebidas com a movimentação do corpo no espaço. A delicadeza da instalação acompanha a fragilidade do estatuto do objeto artístico, aquela que nos faz af irmar que tudo que está exposto aqui é arte. Se estivessem em outro local, esses arranjos seriam descartes. Eles existem e sobrevivem pela experiência do público e pelos registros feitos disso. São os códigos da galeria, como este, legitimadores dos trabalhos e do discurso, que interessam a Claire Nichols.

Claire Nichols

nicholsclaire[at]gmail[dot]com

X

  • PERFORMANCES

    Performance documents are accessible on Vimeo: www.vimeo.com/user49554373

  • biography

    Emerging from a deep interest in materiality and collaboration, Claire Nichols creates sculptural eco-systems which negotiate the codes and rhythms of chosen sites, and generate new performative and inter-disciplinary encounters. Initiated during an artist residency at the Florence Trust, London, in 2017, Nichols has been developing an ongoing series entitled Variations through which she creates live sculptural compositions. Through the series, she sheds a theatrical light on the process of sculptural construction, bringing it into the space of performance and exhibition. Found and fabricated materials are brought together in a continuous process of making and remaking, whilst drawings and photographs archive related moments and ideas and re-enter the scene as prints on fabric. Operating more like organisms than static installations, the resulting Variations are living systems that are open to changes of structure, material and balance, all according to the tempo of improvised movement.

     

    Adding a new dimension to her sculptural investigations, and speaking to their continuously shifting nature, Nichols has initiated a series of music and movement collaborations in London and in Mumbai. Her evolving compositions with found objects become sheet music to be played by musicians or a score to be interpreted through movement. She is interested in the blurring of disciplinary boundaries and the attempted sharing of tacit forms of knowledge as cross-disciplinary constellations are created, collapsed and rebuilt anew.

     

    Solo exhibitions include Enclave Lab, London (2017); Barbican Arts Group Trust, London (2018); Space 118, Mumbai (2020) and Method Art Space, Mumbai (forthcoming, 2021). Group exhibitions include David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Art on the Underground, London; Banner Repeater, London; Centre Cultural la Mercè, Girona; and Despina, Rio de Janeiro. Residencies include Space 118, Mumbai; Florence Trust, London; FormContent, London; Despina, Rio de Janeiro; and Hangar, Barcelona (forthcoming, 2020). Nichols is Course Leader for the BA Fine Art Study Abroad Programme at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

  • cv

    Education

     

    2008–2010

    MFA, Goldsmiths College, University of London

     

    2003–2006

    BFA, Ruskin, University of Oxford

     

     

    Selected Exhibitions and Performances


    2021

    Solo Show, Method Art Space, Mumbai

     

    2020

    Space 118 Variations, performance with dancer Vaidehi Patel and classical guitarist Abhinav Saxena, Space 118, Mumbai

    2018
    BAM-BOO, Solo Show, ArtWorks Project Space, Barbican Arts Group Trust, London

     

    2017
    Barbican Arts Group Trust Open: Main Prize winner selected by Florence Peake and Tai Shani, ArtWorks Project Space, London

    The arebyte Variations, performance for Concertina by Richard Wentworth and APPARATA, arebyte Gallery, London

     

    Summer Exhibition, Florence Trust, London

     

    The Enclave Variations, Solo Performance Event curated by Sol Polo, Enclave Lab, London

     

    Winter Open, Florence Trust, London

     

    2016

    Lacuna, performance with Jennifer Taylor, Despina, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

     

    Concrete Circle, performances, Two Hotel, Bahia, Brazil

     

    2015

    Espaços de Vidro, residency exhibition, Despina Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

     

    Sketchy Remarks, group exhibition, Floating Islandt, London

     

    2014

    Pole Pole, group exhibition curated by artist Laura Wilson, Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

     

    2013

    Containing the Possible, curated with Carsten Recksik, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London

     

    2012

    One Thing Leads To Another, Jubilee Line Commissions, Art on the Underground, London

     

    The Apocralypse, online at www.itlookedlikeatheatre.co.uk, curated by artist Barry Sykes

     

    2011

    f ig.3: I don’t know what to say, group exhibition curated by Anca Rujoiu and Stef Hirsch, David Roberts Art Foundation, London

     

    The Diagram: Blackboard Series, SPACE, London, touring to Torna, Istanbul

     

    Convergence: Literary Art Exhibitions, group exhibition, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast

     

    2009–11

    The Empty Gallery Interviews, David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Limoncello, London; Gasworks, London; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Art House Foundation, London; and Plymouth Arts Centre

     

    2010

    Digestives, radio series, Resonance FM

     

    London Art Book Fair, Whitechapel, London

     

    New York Art Book Fair, PS1, New York

     

    the diagram, Banner Repeater, London

     

    the diagram, FormContent, London

     

    2009

    Contested Ground, group exhibition, Zabludowicz Collection, London

     

     

    Residencies

     

    2020

    Hangar, Barcelona (Forthcoming)

     

    Space 118, Mumbai

    2016–17

    Florence Trust, London

     

    2016

    Two Hotel, Bahia, Brazil

     

    2015

    Despina, Rio de Janeiro. Brazil

     

    Floating Island, London

     

    2010

    FormContent, London

     

    2008

    Kala Art Institute, Berkeley CA, USA

     

     

    Collections

     

    Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, University of London

     

    Special Collections, Chelsea College of Art & Design

  • text (EN)

    Residency Catalogue, Florence Trust, London, 2017

    By Ashlee Conery

     

    The cycle of making, collapsing and exhibiting forms the core of Claire Nichols’ practice. Interested in the designed sites of studio and gallery spaces, she begins with the existing material from these physical, temporal and hypothetical environments. During her residency at Despina, in Rio de Janeiro, Nichols began to consider her position within this short-lived space of production and display. Inhabiting the city and residency as an observer attuned to the rhythms of transitory materials, of f-cuts or refuse, her work began to engage with temporality and ‘thingness’, contradicting methodologically the expected outcomes or ‘use of space’ within such an environment. An exercise she has continued at the Florence Trust, Nichols began by taking down the walls of her studio, and gathering the discarded matter of the place, and its past and present inhabitants.

     

    Over the course of these two occupancies, her exploration of ‘thingness’ has involved exchanges with estranged bits of glass and fabric, as well as overlooked masonry patterns in a public square. They become notes or gestures read by dancers and musicians whom Nichols invites to engage with them as they would sheet music or stage direction. As her ‘inviting’ and ‘borrowing’ becomes routine to her fellow residents, things appear within her space that she did not select, but which are thought to belong with her. Without diminishing her unilateral position within the composition, she gives agency to the objects within her environment by inviting this constellation of actants. Periodically Nichols takes down, removes or paints sections, accepting the outcome of intersections along the way. Describing the work as an organism, rather than a sculpture or installation, she poignantly evades a clear ending. Living and developing, the precarious balances erected and exchanged within the space seem to mirror the delicate ecosystem of the residency. The work is, as the artist, in constant evolution. Existing beyond brief performances or f ixed bodies, within unexpected and ongoing collaborations with other artists, materials or geographies, that grow organically.

     

    Small books of drawings that behave more like dialogue than document, between her and her assemblages, sit quietly at the border. A site for articulating and exploring her ideas around improvisation, she treats the space of the book as an echo of her interventions, each folio a chamber reverberating and rif f ing on traces of the marks made on the previous pages.

  • text (PT)

    Espaços de Vidro, Despina, Rio de Janeiro, 2017

    By Dr Carla Hermann

     

    A inglesa Claire Nichols trabalha as sutilezas das relações que ocorrem no cubo branco. Na instalação que apresenta ao f im de um mês de residência no Rio de Janeiro, Claire investiga a performatividade dos objetos e do espaço institucional. Para isso, expõe a vulnerabilidade das obras, seja pela materialidade que usa para construí-los, seja pela relação que eles estabelecem com as pessoas. “O observador está ciente de estar em uma relação indeterminada, aberta – e imprecisa – sujeito ao objeto impassível sobre a parede ou o chão”, nos diz Michael Fried, em seu ensaio “Arte e Objetividade”, de 1967. Em análise da natureza do trabalho minimalista, o autor nos diz que a experiência não ocorre mais no interior da obra, e sim na situação construída pelo objeto. É ele que, posicionado no espaço, cria uma situação que só pode existir com o espectador, e por isso, precisa incluí-lo.

     

    O trabalho de Claire é composto por retângulos de vidros f inos apoiados uns nos outros. Cubos de cimento, que permanecem no limiar entre a mera funcionalidade e a escolha estética – seriam formas pré-fabricadas usadas para f ins construtivos ou seriam cubos perfeitos de cor neutra produzidos em série para marcar a presença da forma? Os únicos artefatos a f igurar são simples copos e calços de porta em madeira, escolhidos por suas geometrias e possibilidades de ref lexos e angulações. A crueza material não quer dizer que a materialidade não importa -, ao contrário, são as características físicas que justif icam sua presença na obra. O vidro cria duplos, ao mesmo tempo em que separa o espaço sem criar uma barreira visível. A solidez opaca dos cubos de cimento contrasta com a transparência das lâminas quebradas e ou de pontas expostas. E esses pequenos perigos dão a percepção de que esses objetos são, tal como as pessoas que caminham por entre eles, vivos.

     

    É na ação que o trabalho acontece, nos ref lexos da interação, nas geometrias das sombras percebidas com a movimentação do corpo no espaço. A delicadeza da instalação acompanha a fragilidade do estatuto do objeto artístico, aquela que nos faz afirmar que tudo que está exposto aqui é arte. Se estivessem em outro local, esses arranjos seriam descartes. Eles existem e sobrevivem pela experiência do público e pelos registros feitos disso. São os códigos da galeria, como este, legitimadores dos trabalhos e do discurso, que interessam a Claire Nichols.