Lot 120: CLARE RICHARDSON

Untitled V
Signed, dated and numbered 4/6 in ink on the reverse of the mount; signed, dated and numbered 4/6 in ink on a label affixed to the reverse of the frame.

49.5 x 61 cm. (19 1/2 x 24 in).

Colour coupler print.

2000

Clare Richardson: Harlemville, White Cube, London, 6 September - 13 October 2001 (another example exhibited)

SteidlMACK, Clare Richardson: Harlemville, 2003, plate 22

Acquired directly from the artist

Clare Richardson spent several months over a period of two years with a community in upstate New York, called ‘Harlemville’. Founded by ‘refugees from late twentieth-century capitalism’, the children are educated according to the principles of the Austrian philosopher and scientist, Rudolph Steiner. This philosophy emphasizes a back to nature simplicity, encouraging free expression, imagination, creativity and play while sequestered from the influence of the media and other elements of the wider society.
 
Unlike many other recent bodies of work that have taken adolescence as their theme, these photographs portray this purportedly troubled period of life as a time of wonder, growth, and serenity. Richardson’s approach is observational, as though her subjects are unaware of her presence. She manages to achieve an intimacy with her subjects that surpasses simple candor. Looking at the image, the viewer is linked in a chain of empathy that seems to invite us to become part of the picture.
 
The audience is privy to more than just the secret world of childhood: Richardson’s sensibility allows us to enter into the youths’ rapt absorption and apparent oneness with their surrounding. ‘Harlemville’ provides a glimpse into a different way of life, one that exhorts us to pay humble attention to nature instead of being locked into a system that constantly obliges us to conquer and destroy it— and thus ultimately ourselves, too.
 
Jason Oddy, ‘Promise lands’, Aperture, no. 186, Spring 2007, p. 42-46