Steven Claydon was born on 1969 Lives and works in London. Steven Claydon appropriates the styles and figures of history to draw provocative connotations between contemporary social concerns and obsolete ideologies. Primarily interested in the concept of veneration – both in the contexts in which past events are documented through modern museology, and in the physical forms by which they have been represented – Claydon exhumes the ‘veritas’ of artifacts, undermining their value and truth through his witty and complex material juxtapositions.
Claydon’s The Author of Mishap (Them) takes its inspiration from J.G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough, an early 20th century dissertation on magic and ritual that was widely denounced for its questionable methodology – a comparative anthropology by ‘genre’ rather than linear science. Mirroring Frazer’s logic, Claydon’s portrait is a composite of three heroic busts of political figures from this time, each embodying radically opposing beliefs. Through this literal hybrid, Claydon incites the current revivals of genetic engineering and post-modern eclecticism as plausible validation of Frazer’s theories.
Substituting the traditional hallowed material of bronze for cast copper powder and resin, Claydon defiles his subject’s monumentality; the aged patina has been created through urinating on the object, both an act of defamation and a reference to Warhol’s egalitarian pop. Set atop a burlap coated plinth reminiscent of 1950s gallery wall coverings, Claydon reinforces his sculpture’s historical stature while belying its association with outdated fashion. The peacock feather operates primarily as a formal device, adding a surreal and dilettantish air to the impoverished authoritarian relic.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2006
• Galerie Kamm, Berlin
• Rings of Saturn, Tate Modern, London
• Dereconstruction, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, curated by Matthew Higgs
• Statements, Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland
• Writing the Strobe, Curated by Andrew Hunt, Dicksmith Gallery, London
2005
• Time Lines, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westphalen, Düsseldorf
• Flies Around the Fury Flotsam, Curators Space, London
• Odiseado Tra Tempo, Peter Kilchmann Galerie, Zurich, curated by Charlotte Mailler
• Jack too Jack, live performance, Portikus, Frankfurt
• Paris – Londres: Le Voyage Interieur, Espace Electra, Paris, curated by Alex Farquharson
• Jack too Jack, live performance, Inverleith House, Edinburgh
• Even a Stopped Clock Tells the Right Time Twice a Day, ICA London
• Jack too Jack, live performance, Rio Cinema, London
• Post no Bills, White Columns, New York
• Clouds of Witness, Islington Town Hall, London
• From Earth, film, Light Box, Tate Britain, London
• Remixed Water, live performance, Manchester.
2004
• Shades of Destructors, live performance, Prince Charles Theatre, London.
• Shades of Destructors, live performance, Gavin Brown Enterprise, New York.
• Shades of Destructors, live performance, Humanist society, London.
• Live web-cast of sculpture at Show studio
• The Last Supper, Group show, Hoxton Distillery
• Remixed Water, remix collaboration with Lawrence Wiener and Ned Sublet
• In The Gathering Darkness, contribution with Neil Chapman for ‘The Poster The Show 1,2,3...’, group exhibition Hoxton Distillery London
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