Open Frequency 2008: Claire Todd selected by Jenny Brownrigg

Open Frequency 2008: Claire Todd selected by Jenny Brownrigg Claire Todd, Nest fountain, 2008

Jenny Brownrigg selects the work of Claire Todd


Formally trained as a sculptor and scenographer, Claire Todd's work incorporates sculpture, drawing, costume, performance and film. Her practice explores a merging of the senses with the scenic through site specific movement and sculpture. She draws on the innate nature of an object, place or physical movement to see its effect on embodiment.

Todd explains her work as being 'fixed to fall'. The amount of time put into her costumes and objects gives them an inner life that is spent though action or performance. 'Lunan Bay' (2001), filmed on Super 8, features the artist being helped into a huge seal form that she made out of neoprene and follows her dangerous trajectory rolling down a dune. This film captures Todd's ability to create a cathartic moment where the loss of control signifies a fleeting connection, in this instance between humans and nature. In 'Oso Bay' (2008), a former US marine hurls aluminium Frisbees cast from marshland grasses, into a mud plain on Ward Island, South Texas. The flight of the Frisbee, and its subsequent fall, momentarily connects sky to ground. These objects were subsequently exhibited in the gallery, 'spent' and covered with mud.

The performers that appear in the works are often connected to the location through formal employment. The fabricated elements or movement open another dynamic within an existing relation to place. 'Cubby' (2000), planted in forestry commission land, consisted of screen printed signs of the Chief Wildlife Ranger in camouflage attire with watering can, amongst antlers sprouting from the ground. In 'Chapel' (2001), the cook of Hospitalfield House, Arbroath, became a 'singing glen'. Sitting on the coffin rest, she is a symbol of verdant abundance. Encased in a costume of a hill replete with animals rolling down its slopes, her sung words, 'You made me love you, I didn't want to do it', are amplified by the chapel's walls. The performances of this period share common notions of circular time, renewal and resurrection.

Todd's drawings teem with life and movement, flying with swirling pencil and watercolor lines creating fluid surfaces and oceanic space for people and nature to inhabit. The harmonious and dissonant spatial planes that move across and ascend the page could be read as musical notation. The recurring motifs of outstretched hands become those of a conductor, carrying a sense of rhythm, thought and intention. The people, forming human chains without end throughout, are further carriers of meaning; their gestures and expressions conveying different moods. Although orders of space and surface collide, each complex drawing viewed as a whole shows a multifarious life system, where the 'community' and its surroundings express a sense of mutual interdependence.

'Companions at Sea' (2004-2008), draws together a cast of individuals; bound in habitual acts that are their anchors in life. Each character has slowly gestated through an organic process of observation, drawing, costume making and in meeting the right person to animate them for film. Todd chooses to show all elements in exhibition, giving each person their own history. The costumes can be of vivid colour and stitch work, ornamented with porcelain and iridescent ceramic forms. The characters are 'carnivalesque', taking this word in its ancient sense, where within excessive exaggeration lies the kernel of truth. 'The Majorette' with fire, stands by the flood prone banks of the River Tiber. The performer is an acrobat, an archetypal artist spinning a stick alight at both ends, perpetually having to keep things going. Her focused attention in the film is precarious, with the potential to be rocked by the weather, a passing runner or thought. 'Cat Lady' is inspired by the 'gattare' of Rome -the ladies that feed stray cats. She wears a costume and headdress of the Byzantine Empress Theodora, who cared for fallen women. 'The Jawfish' is based on a Yellow Headed Eel, remarkable in luminosity and for the capacity of the male of the species to oxygenate unborn life in its mouth.

Overall Todd's work drives towards a super abundance of emotion. Yet in the ebb and flow of excess, open space and rupture, there are glimpses of both simplicity and the miraculous to be found within the trajectory of life.

Jenny Brownrigg, June 2008


Artist's biography

Claire Todd (b. 1971, London) graduated in 1999 from the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam following an MA Scenography St Martins, London (1995) and a BA Fine Art Sculpture University of Northumbria Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1994). Artist residencies she has undertaken include: University of Northern Arizona Flagstaff Research residency (2007); Scottish Sculpture Workshop Lumsden Aberdeenshire Research / production residency (2006); Arts Council of England Helen Chadwick Fellowship British School at Rome St. Peter's College Oxford (2004); Grizedale Arts (2000); Hospitalfield House Arbroath Scotland (2000).

Selected commissions include: ceramic sculpture tiles and curtains for the Polderweg flats, Amsterdam, commissioned by: Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Ymere, De Kleine Johannes and De Verenigde Amstelhuizen - housing associations for people with physical and mental disabilities (2004 -2005); ceramic Fountain for public square, City Council Knokke-Heist, Belgium (2002-4); Arts Advocacy Project, Liff Psychiatric Hospital Dundee (2001).

Selected solo exhibitions include: Sincfala Folk Museum (2008, 2001), Knokke-Heist Belgium; Stella Lohaus Gallery (2001 & 1999) Antwerp Belgium.

Selected exhibitions/performances include: OSO BAY Biennale, Corpus Christi University, Texas (2008), Oceanic Waves, Kaapeli Helsinki (2006), Bearing Lightness, Ruskin School of Drawing (2006), Maps and Music Social Housing Mental Health Project, Polderweg, Amsterdam (2005),Arts Festival, St Peter's College, Oxford University (2004), Paul Andriesse Gallery, Amsterdam (2003), Vane, Newcastle Upon Tyne (2003), Someone to Watch Over Me, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam (2003), PQ Projects, Wuppertal, Germany (2002), Grizedale Live Ambleside, Cumbria, (2001), Biennale Louvain Le Neuve, Belgium (2000).

Claire Todd lives in Dundee and London.


About Jenny Brownrigg

Jenny Brownrigg is University of Dundee Exhibitions Department Curator at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (2002-). She graduated with BA (hons) Fine Art from Glasgow School of Art (1990-4) and MFA at DJCAD (1996). Previous posts have included; Gallery Co-ordinator at Changing Room Gallery, Stirling (1998-9), and Project Officer at Grizedale Arts, Cumbria (2000-2).

As an artist Jenny undertook several residencies including the Scottish Arts Council Pier Arts Centre Fellowship, Orkney (1998). She is also the author of two publications; 'Nature Centre', the result of a writer's residency with Grizedale Arts, and 'Romantic Vanguard', a screenplay which was developed during her artist residency with Royston Road Project in Blackhill, Glasgow (2002). She writes articles for magazines including Untitled and The Map. She was co-curator of The Young Artists' Biennial Absent Without Leave (AWOL) , 2nd Edition, Bucharest, Romania, Oct 14 - Nov 16 2006. 


Open Frequency keeps you in touch with new developments in contemporary art practice from across the UK. The artists are selected and profiled by leading curators, artists and writers, presenting the work of artists to watch out for over the coming year. Open Frequency represents a forward-looking glance today of the artists who will be setting the agenda tomorrow.