PROFILE

Pete Clarke is a Liverpool based artist who aims to create a significant aesthetic practice by exploring and challenging the definitions, assumptions and practices of contemporary image making utilising painting, printmaking, photography, poetic text and drawing.

He is aware that the contemporary debates and problematic questions confronting the modern painter are how to function within the context of a dominant consumer culture of the moving image and televisual spectacle. His strategy aims to integrate cultural theory and aesthetics by considering the visual image as a sign in contemporary culture.

He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire teaching painting on the undergraduate course and the MA course leader in Fine Art.

Recently he has been appointed Design Team Artist on the Bluecoat Art Centre Liverpool regeneration and rebuilding project, which is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, North West Development Agency, Arts Council and Liverpool City Council. The Design Team Artist consultancy project encourages the inclusion of artists within architectural project design and to research ways in which the artists’ voice can contribute to the overall creative concept and building development. He is in design collaboration with architect Hans van der Heijden, from Biq, Architecten, Rotterdam in a project managed by Buro 4, Manchester.

EXHIBITION SUMMARY

‘Unheimlich’, ‘Die Halle’,Wiesbaden, Germany, April/May 2001.
‘Unheimlich’ was an exhibition concept uniting British and European Artists developed by artists strongly associated with the North West of England. The exhibition hosted by Wiesbaden artists’ ‘Die Halle’ was the most recent in a series of international artists’ initiatives and exchanges. The exhibition exhibited seven large paintings by Pete Clarke and incorporated work by Geoff Molyneux, Liverpool City College, Pam Meecham, Institute of Education, London and Paul Sullivan, director of Static, architectural practice and gallery, Liverpool.

‘Unheimlich’, Static Publications
Pete Clarke was also commissioned by the leading journal for contemporary art ‘[a-n] for artists’ to write an illustrated account of the exhibition and explore the developing network of the international projects in the September issue 2001.

‘Numberless islands’
Michael West Gallery, Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight, March 2002.

The solo exhibition includes work from three recent series of paintings by Pete Clarke including ‘letters to language’, images exploring the city as a metaphor: ‘city of ships and stores’, an installation of twenty paintings: and ‘city going to sea’, a series of island paintings incorporating poetic text suggesting history, memory and loss.

‘EIGHT DAYS A WEEK’
‘Eight Days a Week’, is a European Exchange project coordinated by Pete Clarke, Bryan Biggs, Director Bluecoat Arts Centre Liverpool and Georg Gartz, Köln artist and Jürgen Kisters, writer and journalist at the Kölner Stadt Anzieger developing contemporary arts festivals, artists’ exchanges and participation from Liverpool and Köln since 1998.

Eight Days has organised over eighty reciprocal projects including publicity, transport, and accommodation, co-editing and writing articles for the newspaper ‘Eight Days a Week: Cologne in Liverpool 2000’. Pete Clarke also led public seminars on European cultural collaborations in the two cities.
www. eight-days-a-week.de

‘Köln Artists’, June - September 2002.
Exhibition curated by Pete Clarke as part of the fiftieth anniversary of Köln and Liverpool’s cultural connections selected the German artists Ruth Gilberger, Georg Gartz and Rita Rohlfing for the Huyton Gallery, Knowsley.

COLLABORATION

A painting project by Pete Clarke & Georg Gartz from Köln
www. chatting-with-colours.de

This project exploring collaborative strategies for painting, individuality and authenticity in a European context has produced work in England and Germany from 1998 onwards and has made reciprocal exhibitions in Köln and Liverpool in 2000. The exhibition catalogue ‘Collaboration’ included contextual essays by Bryan Biggs, Director Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool and Jürgen Kisters, German Art Critic and Journalist. The exhibitions had favourable reviews in the ‘Kölner Stadt Anzeiger’, the ‘Guardian Review’ and ‘Artists Newsletter’.

‘Chatting with colours’, ‘Kunstwerk’, Köln October & November 2001.

The exhibition at Kunstwerk included recent paintings made collaboratively with Georg Gartz in the studios at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and an installation made of previous collaborative paintings made in Liverpool, Preston and Köln. The exhibition was funded by the British Council in Germany, Eight days a week, Kulturamt Köln, Kunstwerk and Uclan. The exhibition was reviewed by the ‘Kölner Stadt Anzeiger’, featured in the Stadt review and publicised by the British Council in Germany’s website included five pictures of our work and review of the exhibition. www.britishcouncil.de/d/arts/liverpool.htm

‘Long night of the museums, Saturday 10/11/ 2001.
The exhibition ‘Kunstwerk’ Köln was highlighted as a major part of the ‘Die lange Nacht der Museen’ [the long night of the museums] when Köln has a celebratory evening for the visual arts organised by the City of Köln and sponsored by the Stadt Review. All the major Köln museums participated with Kunstwerk the selected independent exhibition.

'Responses’ at Bilderrahmen Werkstatt, Köln, November & December 2001
The exhibition of paintings explored the individual and collaborative art practice of Pete Clarke & Georg Gartz, included thirty-six works.

‘Collaborators’, Exhibition June 2002 and printmaking residency in Graphic Arts at Liverpool Art School, Liverpool John Moores University.

‘Kooperative K’, Hagen, Germany, Exhibition & installation at Hagen Atelier 2003.

‘Artists in Residence’, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 2003.

‘Site Sculpture’ at Simonskaul, Germany, July 2003

JOURNALISM

Commissioned Article for the September Edition 2001 of [a-n] For Artists Magazine giving an account of the Unheimlich Exhibition in Wiesbaden, which is part of an ongoing network of artist’s initiatives and exchanges between artists from the North West of England and different European Cities.

‘Independent Spirit’, a Commissioned Article for the October Edition 2002 of [a-n] For Artists exploring concepts behind the ‘Liverpool Biennial’ of 1999 and how 2002 is addressing issues for regional art practice and artists’ initiatives.