Clara Clark

Salt Gallery, Hayle

Opened 1st March, 2008

Hybrids between Victorian museum dioramas and Nauman-like installations, Clara Clark's large installation sculptures recreate in concrete form landscapes that might otherwise only be experienced in a fleeting or transient way.

Her project 'Space-ship' in the Salt Gallery 'Front Room' was a short cave-like tunnel made out of wood and plaster, with a gang-plank penetrating into gloomy green darkness down which a viewer could walk. The central axis of the tunnel was occupied by a pair of slowly turning lights which appeared to be scanning the inside walls, like robotic search lights. As they turned little cubes and blocks - no bigger than a thumbnail and suggestive of houses or dwellings seen from space - came into view.

These Lilliputian forms, familiar eg from the satellite images of Google Earth, created a imaginary surface that worked against the solidity of the structure as a whole, so that what first appeared as a cave or mining tunnel, was transformed into a low-tech space simulator.

Also on show in the next door spaces of the Salt Gallery were a mixed selection of paintings - a separate display of work by Janet Lynch -  photographs by Michael Donnelly, and videos by Yvonne Buckheim, Alex Pearl, Lisa Vinebaum and Austin Houldsworth.