The contrast of old and new that is apparent in Colchester is a concept frequently explored by Claydon in his body of work, and in particular within Culpable Earth. Two of the pieces incorporate historical motifs in the form of faces as seen in sculptures and fountains in classical Rome or the Renaissance. In Who Conjured You Out of the Clay? (2012), a portrait bust of an anonymous figure sits atop a vermillion-coloured cube. The man bearded and in a flattened hat, seems at home in the gallery space – an image seen time and again in endless variations. The delicate moulding and muted colours contrast dramatically with the smooth, vibrant cube. Beneath the cube, at a vantage point more suitable for children than adults, lurks a mysterious beast waiting to devour whoever steps too close. Perhaps this creature belongs in a Last Judgement scene or is a descent of a fairy tale monster, but its presence reinforces the contrast between the historical and contemporary within the one.

Claydon’s attention to the senses is what separates this exhibition from others because it is no longer a work of the visual arts, but a feast for the senses… The pixilated work constructed of beeswax exudes a sweet and organic scent that permeates the gallery space. The work could have been executed in any number of materials, but by electing to use beeswax, curiosity is heightened in the viewer by the increased depth of perception. Upon entering the building and approaching the exhibition space, a wavering drone fills the lofty passageway. Carrier (2012) is constructed of ceramic, a microphone, amplifier, and powder-coated steel. These unlikely materials unite to create a large bell from which a microphone is suspended, hovering like a pendulum over the amplifier. Variations in condition – from a draft to nearing footsteps – alter the position of the microphone thereby changing the quality of sound. Despite the works being held under the ‘no touching’ policy common in most gallery spaces, several of Claydon’s works give the impression of touch by the emphasis on materiality. Who Conjured You Out of the Clay? resembles marble or other stone, perhaps clay (as hinted in the titled). In actuality, however, the figure is composed of polyurethane foam. This contradiction in perception inspires an urge to feel the work to verify the claims of the object label. Additionally, the video installation entitled The Earth at Work includes images of pottery wheels and the sensuality of the wet clay in the potter’s hands is almost palpable.

Emily Sack, Aesthetica Magazine blog

 

Reading Steven Claydon's already impressive CV, which includes shows at some of the world's most prestigious art galleries, it's clear why firstsite Senior Curator Michelle Cotton asked him to put on an exhibition in the new building.

His interest in the passage of time and using historical objects to examine people and places could be seen by some as an extension of the opening show at firstsite, Camulodunum.

Examine the shape, see the colours and think about how a brick is made.

Then look at John Constable's dramatic cloudscapes and think about how clouds are made.

That's pretty much all Claydon is asking you to do – think about how things are made. As such, you have tin cans made out of wood, bricks made out of aluminium and wheels and bells, usually cast in metal, made out of ceramics.

Breaking down each piece to its basic constituents, you also have references to the blue, red and green used in imagery and basic shapes used in geometry, like squares, triangles and circles. The busts of anonymous bearded men are beautifully carved, but out of unusual materials – one is foam and the other is resin with bamboo fungus growing behind it.

Dealing with how things function rather than being made, Steven has created a novel bell, which, rather than making sound, receives it from an amp down below, thanks to a microphone hainging where the bell's clapper should be.

Like the rest of the show, it makes you look at normally functional things in different ways.

Neil D'Arcy-Jones, Colchester Gazette

 

Our relationship with the material world around us, specifically with objects and the meanings we place on them, is what's explored in this fascinating but challenging exhibition.

At first glance, you might think it's just an array of random objects, just another collection of conceptual art that you can't connect with.

Some tin cans, a ceramic bell hanging above a microphone and amplifier, a cluster of aluminum bricks, a wall of beeswax rectangles, three wall-mounted lights... You can imagine people rubbing their hands in glee, saying, "this isn't art".

But delve deeper, into the thought processes behind the work and the construction processes behind the pieces, and you realise how remarkable the objects we take for granted are.

Steven Claydon is fascinated with the "passage of materials" and how those materials go on a journey from their raw state to finished product, whether that be an everyday object like a tin can or something we place cultural significance on, like a work of art or an exhibit in a museum.

On a guided tour of the exhibition as the finishing touches are being put to it, he talks us through his ideas.

Claydon starts by showing us with what looks like some tin cans and a flask on a plinth with a red frame over them. It turns out the plinth contains a resin panel which contains shredded £10 notes while the cans are actually made of solid wood.

So the plinth, which is usually just there to display the artwork, is embedded with (now defunct) value. The cans, familiar, everyday objects, have had their utility removed but in doing so have been transformed into art and their value has been increased. Claydon is confronting us with this physical and cultural transformation.

And so it continues throughout the exhibition, which is Claydon's first major solo show in the UK.

An array of three industrial lights on a wall come to signify the corpuscular, particle nature of light itself.

A ceramic bell, which feeds back into an amplifier via a microphone, would shatter if you actually hit it, thus belying its very purpose.

A pile of aluminium bricks seems to represent materials at their most basic level, but the manufacture of these bricks is a precise, technical process in itself.

What seems simple at first, is much more complicated on closer inspection.

Claydon continues to look at representations of the everyday by different means in a parallel exhibition, Equivalents, which features five cloud studies by John Constable alongside Carl Andre's controversial sculpture Equivalent VIII, 120 firebricks arranged in rows.

"It's not about 'anyone can do it'," says Claydon of Equivalents. "It's about finding something beautiful.

"The beauty of art is that you can get people to redress things they take for granted."

And that applies as much to clouds as it does to bricks. There's beauty all around us every day; we just need to realise it.

Darryl Webber, Essex Chronicle

 

For its second exhibition since the opening of its new, shiny banana-shaped building last September, Firstsite has managed quite a coup: commissioning Steven Claydon's first major show in a British institution. It's surprising that it hasn't happened before. Claydon's work has been included in exhibitions from London's Hayward Gallery to Long Island's Sculpture Center; he is no doubt one of the most respected artists of his generation in the country, and yet museums lagged behind. Not anymore — and it was worth the wait.

Culpable Earth is a thrilling mise-en-scene of Claydon's ongoing concern with the life of objects, the values and meanings they acquire and lose, and the links existing between shape, material and use. Most of his sculptures have an appealing patina; they looking like the artefacts of a disturbingly familiar world, a slightly skewed version of ours. The passage of differentiated substance (all works 2012) gathers on a low plinth a large dark ceramic barrel adorned with beardy face, the hubs of two car wheels, also in ceramic, and a wheel made of wicker. Embedded in the plinth, two girders stand like tracks for the fictional vehicle hinted at by these loose parts. The display begs the question: is a highly breakable wheel still a wheel, and not just the memory of another object — the two irreconcilable because lacking a shared function? And would a real wheel cease to be that once put on a plinth?

The exposure of this disconnection between the original and subsequent uses of artefacts runs through the show as a leitmotif. One of Claydon's compositions includes a small votive figure, which he claims comes from "the first civilization in the Indus Valley." The artist provocatively added extra arms to it, mocking the holy aura granted to all things old. "I mess about with it a little," Claydon told ARTINFO UK. "For me, [this figure] is just as important as when I get a piece from a Hoover. Because really that's what it is. When it was built it had a kind of utility and then it lost it and it was thrown away. It's only because of its provenance and the venerability of its age that we give it some kind of value."

More than the object itself, Claydon addresses the "meta-object," what he calls the "accretions of signifiers" that accumulate around things, almost to the point of becoming a thing of their own. "What happens when an object becomes a cultural heirloom?" he asks. The artist pokes into what he describes as a "secular animism," unwrapping the many lives of the inanimate. In his work, the viewer-sculpture relationship is often the reverse of that resulting from the "messed about" Indian antique: Claydon creates pieces that appear ancient while simultaneously negating their authenticity. The bicephalous saint of "Convolute" could have been hacked off a cathedral high-relief, if it wasn't for the fact that it is made of amber-like resin. The piece doesn't fit in any easy-to-define period. It belongs to an imaginary temporality, acting, like Claydon's practice, as a prism through which to revaluate the present.

Coline Milliard, ArtInfo, February 2012