The work Clare Charnley made for Taxi Gallery is part of a series of recent works that attempt to explore the difficulty of representing the state of war. She started with the observation that in paintings of battles, particularly ones that are presented as a clash of cultures, there is/was a convention of depicting discarded objects. Often these are the debris of warfare - scimitars, gas canisters, spears, small arms etc., but also hats, letters, jewellery and work tools - the objects of non-war. Parted from their dead owners/operators, each object has become disorientated. Made useless. Its task is now to point to things beyond the frame of the picture - a difficult job because it has been rendered inarticulate (dumb?) through dislocations of time, place and culture. Continuing this process she remade a large number of objects from war paintings from across geography and history, a confusion of artistic styles and understandings. These functionless objects were bundled and jumbled into the luggage compartment of the taxi, its 'uselessness' as vehicle emphasised by the tarpaulin placed over it.

The opening event for 'Useless' included a screening of 'The Translation' - a video work by Clare Charnley and a talk in which Clare placed this work within the context of her recent performances in which she examines the cultural ignorance of the visiting artist.

Clare Charnley has been making and exhibiting work consistently since the early 1970s and is currently Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Hull School of Art and Design. Clare is an accomplished maker/sculptor working with a diverse range of materials from rat skins to rose thorns to railway sleepers. Photography has always been central to Clare's practice and more recently she has worked with video, live performance and collaboration. Clare says of her work: "The work looks diverse. It hops between aesthetics and processes. In fact at first glance you could think an exhibition of my work was a group show. However there are some concerns/lines of enquiry that run through. In particular the work activates shifts and erasures of meanings by moving something from one cultural context to another. This something can be objects, language or myself." Recent exhibitions include; 2003 Floating Gallery, Winnipeg, Canada, 2003 Alternator Gallery, British Columbia, Canada, 2003 The War Effort, Manchester Metropolitan Gallery, 2002, Day of the Unread, House Gallery, London, 2001' East of Eden' Spacex Gallery, Exeter, 2001 'Egzotika' Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania Forthcoming exhibitions include: 2003 Living Art Museum, Reyjavick, Iceland (performance) 2003 Cesta International Festival, Czech Republic (collaboration with German artist Elizabeth Moll)

www.clarecharnley.com

comments book extract:

great to hear about the Estonian piece - I loved the way you tried (and prob succeeded) to engage and relate to the Estonians rather than "preach" western/northern/MacDonaldian style

note:

This was the first time that an artist's talk was included as an element of a Taxi Gallery opening event and was very well received - it's something that I'd like to repeat, particularly where the artist has used the opportunity to exhibit at Taxi Gallery as part of an ongoing investigation within their practice or where the work needs placing within a broader context.

observation:

Useless was a work that rewarded close observation - many regular Taxi gallery passers-by seemed to assume that the Gallery had been put into storage because of the tarpaulin covering .... those that did spot the intriguing yellow objects through the slit in the covering were drawn into the garden for a closer look ..... the topicality of the subject matter inevitably led to conversations about the repurcussions of the war in Iraq .... several people wondered whether the choice of the colour yellow was a reference to the colour's association with cowardice...?

artist's reflection:

coming soon