Clunie Reid

In October 2009 I curated the second exhibition of Clunie Reid at MOT International. The exhibition was a great success, receiving critical acclaim in both Art Forum and Art Review. Clunie Reid showed a new series of individual wall based works that pushed the medium and scale of her previous small photo-collages and focused the mass information of her wall based installations while retaining their raw guttural and immediate appropriation of media images. These new works successfully enlarge and focus our gaze on the reversed spectacle of contemporary society, slipping it to us in the bite-sized snippets for our media-holic minds to devour. Pages from hello, loaded, adverts from TV, images from the internet are re-photographed and printed on reflective surfaces. Broken cameras, disruptive flash glare and printing slippage are all appropriated to enhance the work. Reid’s venomous wit is hand written over these seductive surfaces, turning the language of spectacle in on itself, negating the stupidity, transforming the dumb into great profundity. Her materials mirror her subjects, the gloss and seductive surfaces combined with the trashy use of tape, stickers and marker pen, perfectly complement the celebrities, sneaker ads and out of focus environments. Clunie Reid's work cuts through a global language and the success of this exhibition went a long way to securing her place in the international art world. Clunie Reid (born in 1971, Pembury, Kent) lives and works in London, UK and is represented by MOT International. She was selected for East International (2007) and received the John Jones Art on Paper Award 2008 for her work at Zoo Art Fair. She has recently participated in Nought to Sixty at the ICA and had solo exhibitions at MOT International, Focal Point Gallery in Southend and Galerie Reinhard Hauff in Stuttgart. Her work has been included in a number of international exhibitions including We came here to get laid not critique dutch culture at Wilfried Lentz Gallery in Rotterdam, Aspen 11 at Neue Alte Brucke in Frankfurt, Local Operations at Serpentine Gallery in London, falkeandcharlotte project space/ Dolores at Ellen de Bruijne Gallery in Amsterdam, and This show is ribbed for her pleasure, Cynthia Broan Gallery, New York