Elly Clarke

Lives and works in London & Suffolk, UK

Artist statement

Elly Clarke [any pronouns] is an artist, curator and researcher interested in the performance and the burden (‘the drag’) of the physical body in a digitally mediated world. They work with analogue and digital photography, video, music, curating and community-based projects and #Sergina - a border-straddling, multi-bodied drag queen who, across one body and several, performs songs and surveys online and offline about love, lust, and data in the mesh of hyper-dis/connection. In this (plurally possible) form/at, #Sergina has performed in queer, art & theatre venues in the UK, Europe, Canada and the USA - including The Lowry, Salford Quays; Brighton Digital Festival; Kulturni Centar GRAD, Belgrade; Shout Festival, Birmingham; Secret Project Robot, Brooklyn; Monster Ronson’s Ichiban Karaoke, Berlin; ONCA, Brighton, The Knot in Ottawa, Canada and The Photographer’s Gallery, London. With collaboration at the core, Clarke works with/in readymade templates - of the camera, the app, the Google Form, the wig, the drag queen, the 9-5 workday, the exhibition vitrine - to expose and play with the in/penetrability of their edges. Clarke has just completed their practice-led PhD at Goldsmiths College, University of London, titled ‘Is My Body Out of Date? The Drag of Physicality in the Digital Age,’ which proposes drag/ging as a mode and method of creating 'blurspace' as a legitimate place to be and to remain in an increasingly tracked and traced context.

Artwork