All the colours, not least purple, have to do with memory, says Robert Clarke about his work, which is currently on show at the Hallward Gallery. At the opening this week, guests walked around quietly looking at his images in muted purple, brown, grey, green and rust. He hasn't used a scrap of paint. The mixed media collection, comprising layers of cement, sand and French polish (known as shellac) represent the bogs, shores and trees of Co Donegal.
Clarke is from Newmills in Co Donegal, a place between Letterkenny and Glenveagh but, he says, the images don't represent exact locations. The collection is entitled Land Marks. "They're from memory . . . things fade, there's nowhere specific, there's just a block of trees on a mountain," he explains. "What I enjoy is the physical aspect of painting. Before, I tried to imbue too much meaning into the painting but that was not really me." The artist's two sisters, Rose Clarke and Sharon Healy, along with Sharon's husband Stephen Healy, are here. "There was always depth to him," says Sharon of her brother, who is also manager of the hip sandwich bar, Nude. "I always knew he'd do something that was different. He could see things differently."
The show is opened by artist Zita Reihill, whose own show was at the Hallward some months ago. Gay O'Neill, artist (and mother of designer Marc O'Neill), loves Clarke's work also. In comparison, her own work is mainly etchings, which are "figurative and naughty".
More Clarke fans turn out to view his work and drink some Kombucha, which is made from a fungus, it seems. (And it's lovely chilled.) The designer Nicola McCutcheon, in denims and plum flip-flops, talks, with her partner, former Crowded House bass player Nick Seymour, to Ali Malek about the latter's up-coming collection of clothes. "It's my present to Ireland," he says of this range which will be called Agus and launched in the Kilkenny Design Shop in August.