In/Tension with June Clark
“Learning printmaking allowed me to wipe the plate just a bit, so that you get an image, but not the full image. [It mimicked] memory, [which] emerges and recedes.”
In the twelfth and final episode of the In/Tension podcast, host Neil Price interviews esteemed visual artist June Clark. The Toronto-based artist shares many aspects her meditative practice spanning nearly 50 years while revealing what excites and concerns her in modern art, the resonance of memory, and her upcoming exhibition Witness at The Power Plant, opening on May 2, 2024!
June Clark, Harlem Quilt, 1997 (detail) Fabric, photo transfers, light. Photo: Silvia Ros. Image courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery
Based in Toronto, June Clark’s art is often autobiographical—engaging with and deconstructing our accepted understandings of history, memory, and identity through a reflection of her upbringing in Harlem as well as her later migration to Canada. Clark’s intensely personal projects relay her search for place in the world beyond the borders or limitations of self. Through mediums such as photography, etching, collage, and sculpture, the artist allows the pivotal events of her life to layer together, constructing new perceptions of the past while simultaneously providing insights into the future. Through this exercise, ideas of linear time dissolve as the artist, audience, and larger world intertwine in complex forms of familial, professional, and cultural inheritance.
Clark has exhibited widely throughout Canada and abroad, including in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto; Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida; and The Polygon Gallery, Vancouver; as well as additional shows in Ecuador, Austria, Paris, and New York. The artist has taught numerous visual arts courses at a myriad of institutions, including York University, the University of Guelph, and OCAD University. Clark’s inaugural survey, Witness, will open at The Power Plant on May 3, 2024.
Alongside her impressive exhibition record, Clark has gained international recognition and for her lens-based artworks. She has participated in several significant residencies including OCAD University in Toronto, The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, and a year-long project in Paris. Her work has been supported by the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts, among other funding bodies.
In/Tension, produced by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, is a limited podcast series of intimate, thought-provoking and accessible conversations with emerging, mid-career, and established contemporary visual artists across Canada. In/Tension aims to shed light on the breadth of the Canadian contemporary art scene and provide a platform for diverse artistic voices to dive deep into their creative intentions and facets of their practice.
This project is supported by a Digital Now grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
