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'Ex-girlfriend' & 'Body Double', Leigh Clarke ©2008 Photography, Gerard Hanson ©2008
Clarke's portraits 'Ex-girlfriend' and 'Body Double' are made in reaction to the notion that historically, artists have deconstructed the human face in response to warfare and political unrest. He draws inspiration from artists who responded to the atrocities of war through Cubism, Surrealism and German Expressionism.
Like previous works he is concerned with how we receive distorted information about people and politics through the media, and how they portray celebrities at their most grotesque to fuel the public's voyeuristic obsessions. His process of locating and purchasing latex masks of key figures on the Internet and then squashing them on photocopiers reveals
the tragedy or tyranny of their legacies through the printed image.
