Bio
Nicole Clift is an early career visual artist and writer based in Tarntanya/Adelaide. Nicole works across oil painting, tapestry weaving and installation to create works that quietly allude to the intangible and invisible structures that make up our reality.
Nicole completed her Honours in Visual Arts (First Class) as a scholarship recipient at Adelaide Central School of Art in 2019. Nicole has exhibited widely in South Australia as well as in Stockholm, SWE and Mexico City, MEX. Nicole recently exhibited at Firstdraft, Sydney and was recently commissioned to make new works for major survey exhibition Radical Textiles at the Art Gallery of South Australia, curated by Leigh Robb and Rebecca Evans. Nicole’s writing will appear in the upcoming Wakefield Press monograph on Dr Sue Kneebone.
Artist Statement
My practice considers the invisible and intangible aspects of reality such as time, gravity, air currents and entropy. Informed by both ancient and contemporary modes of natural philosophy, I express this research through a spatial//textile practice incorporating tapestry weaving, painting and installation. I am especially interested in ancient natural philosophy and poetic/alternative ways of understanding physics and time. In particular, sub-atomic and planetary phenomena that can reveal paradoxes and contradictions within our current understanding of matter and energy. I enjoy referencing these ‘coherence glitches’ as nods to destabilise our authoritative position on a species level.
I create installations that reference or make visible these notions of destabilising and indifferent sub-structures, as well as encouraging a materially nuanced approach to interdisciplinary art making. The research informing my work is rooted is also founded in contemporary writing around physics and meteorology, as well as theory on geology and astronomy.
I create abstract woven and painted works at different scales, which feature repeatable patterns such as grids and lattices, and non-repeating elements such as scribbled loops. I often reference Abstraction as an apt visual language for approaching the intangible.
Photos: Rosina Possingham