Clive Walley

Artist statement

Concepts
To start with, in the sixties, I made environments, painting and sculpture, basing the environments on the notions of Marshall McLuhan and my painting on Jasper Johns. I got interested in the dimensionality of painting by reading Clement Greenberg et al. I saw painting losing ground to film and TV and decided to improve its viability by increasing its dimensionality!

I have usually co-operated with composers to make my later films. Because they are abstract I want them to work like music rather than as conventional narratives.

My professional training has left me with an abiding interest in the philosophy of science. I made "Light of Uncertainty" as the first of a planned trilogy of films which depend on the ideas of post-classical science. I wanted to indicate that the new knowledge is not as inimical to the spirit as was the old. I could not finance the last two.

Then I was ill in 2004. Being ill changes your mind a little bit. I am noticing that.

Now I am in Somerset working with other artists making video installations. These new pieces are collaborations with Michael Bennet. His paintings form the content of shows which exploit the relation between "original", material works of art and their technologically mediated ghosts.

Influences
Hybrid, Multi-media, Painting

Career path
My University degree was in Engineering. I used a Diploma in Education to convert to being an Art teacher. In the sixties I taught art and general studies to pay for my practice in North Wales. Later I became a self-employed builder.

I exhibited in North Wales on a regular basis, usually in one or two person shows, using the University Gallery in Bangor as a main venue.
In parallel with the painting and the day jobs, we began to experiment with film in various co-ops and umbrella groupings. I eventually sold my first art-film idea to TV in 1982 and used that film to sell a quartet proposal to Channel 4 thereafter. I began to win awards. C4, BBC2 and S4C have bought my art films over a period of twenty years and Procter and Gamble, among others, have bought my commercial work.

Now I am now based in Frome, Somerset, and have returned to painting and art movies.