The One Talent is a solo presentation of photographs by Tikorangi-based artist Fiona Clark. Unflinching and compelling, this series of images explores various approaches to self-portraiture. A range of photographic techniques, media and supports are used to capture the artist’s likeness as it changes over time, from her early days as a student at the Elam School of Fine Arts (including a performance at Karangahape Road’s Pink Pussycat Club); through to images of surgical recovery at Middlemore Hospital in the 1970s and its extended aftermath.
Fiona Clark
50%
1997
Photographic emulsion on cotton cloth and embroidery
Image 619 x 512mm, Frame 730 x 625 x 35mm
Unique
Exhibition history:
56 Artillery Lane, Raven Row, London, United Kingdom, 2017
Fiona Clark
Self Portrait, 1988, Tikorangi
1988/2021
Pigment Ink on Ilford Smooth Gloss 310gsm
Image 288 x 282mm, Frame 490 x 472 x 38mm
Edition 1 of 3
Exhibition history:
Malcolm Ross, Fiona Clark, Grant Lingard: Looking at Men, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2021–2022.
Fiona Clark
Ruby at the Pink Pussy Cat Club, K’Rd. Auckland. June 1973
1973/2016
Fibre-based chemical print
Image 200 x 298mm, Frame 402 x 490 x 35mm
Edition 1 of 3
Exhibition history:
Groundswell: Avant-Garde Auckland 1971–1979, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2018–2019
All Lines Converge, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu, New Plymouth, 2016–2017
For Fantastic Carmen, Artspace Aotearoa, 2016
Fiona Clark
Self Portrait Cabbage Enterprises, Managing Director. 1972, Auckland Harbour
1972/2019
Pigment Ink on Ilford Smooth Gloss 310gsm
Image 320 x 320mm, Frame 508 x 492 x 35mm
Edition 1 of 3
Exhibition history:
Raw Material, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth, 2019
Fiona Clark
Genomegram
1996
Ilfochrome Positive Print
Image 507 x 405mm, Frame 590 x 483 x 38mm
Unique
Fiona Clark
Moorefields, London 1986
1986/1999
Positive Colour Print, Ilfochrome
Image 202 x 251mm, Frame 282 x 330 x 40mm
Unique
Fiona Clark
Self-test, holding my grey colour test card in my mother’s garden. Onerao. Taranaki
1978
C-type Agfacolour print
Image 170 x 246mm, Frame 368 x 440 x 40mm
Unique
Fiona Clark
Dressed for the Demolition party, Club 47, New Plymouth. 10 February 1996
1996/2023
Pigment Ink on Ilford Smooth Gloss 310gsm
Image 404 x 268mm, Frame 614 x 465 x 40mm
Edition 1 of 3
Fiona Clark
At Middlemore Hospital July 1977. Auckland
1977/2023
Pigment Ink on Ilford Smooth Gloss 310gsm
Image 268 x 402mm, Frame 470 x 596 x 34mm
Edition 1 of 3
Fiona Clark
Self-Portrait at the Gay Liberation University Quad meeting as Maureen. June 1973
1973/2023
Pigment Ink on Ilford Smooth Gloss 310gsm
Image 269 x 400mm, Frame 470 x 596 x 34mm
Edition 1 of 3
Fiona Clark (b. 1954, Inglewood, NZ) lives and works in Tikorangi. Her photographs provide access to crucial forms of social history, often investigating the politics of gender, identity, and the body. For over four decades Clark has produced intimate and engaged images of bodies generally avoided by the public gaze, be they drag performers, professional body-builders, or people living with HIV. While studying at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland, between 1972-5, Clark developed a performance-based practice before moving into photography in her final year. Performativity and the politics of identity would prove to be concepts which informed Clark’s later work, and these interests indirectly led her to document Auckland’s drag and transsexual communities. These works provided the methodology for much of Clark’s later practice, especially in their emphasis on a collaborative approach and a sense of responsibility towards her images’ subjects, as seen in the then-controversial Dance Party series, which was subject to censorship after being included in the Auckland Art Gallery’s 1977 group show, The Active Eye. Between 2002–2006 Clark exhibited a series of solo exhibitions, entitled GO GIRL, at public art institutions across Australasia, including at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin (2006); Whangarei Art Museum, Whangarei (2005); and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2002). In 2016 Clark participated in the SIART 9 Biennale at Museo Nacional de Arte, Bolivia and produced the solo exhibition For Fantastic Carmen at Artspace Aotearoa, Auckland. A feature-length documentary, Fiona Clark: Unafraid was released in 2021 and in 2023 Clark was made an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate.
