In a small studio above a Norwich nightclub, I’m looking at a very unusual painting. It’s an artwork depicting Hitler waiting to be plunged into a pool of gunge, just like the one from kids’ TV show Get Your Own Back. “The gunge is made out of the famous paintings that Hitler put in the exhibition of degenerate art,” explains 29-year-old artist Liam Ashley Clark. On closer inspection, beneath Hitler’s feet, there is a colourful gloop of Kandinsky circles, Picasso faces and Mondrian squares. Huddled around this new A2 painting on paper – I am on the only chair in the studio, Clark is perched on a tool box – our laughter at the absurdity of it is reminiscent of teenage years spent giggling at David Shrigley cards in Virgin Megastores.
The comedic, sketchbook style naturally elicits comparisons between the two artists, but where Shrigley’s punchlines end with laughter, Clark’s poignantly probe the chaotic world we live in.
The Get Your Own Back podium bears the words “Merz your own back”, a reference to Kurt Schwitters’ interpretation of Dada. Clark produced the painting during a retreat to Schwitters’ Merz Barn in the Lake District, where Schwitters made his home after fleeing Nazi Germany. Inspired by the phrase “the triumph of creativity over evil” – which is displayed on the wall of the studio – Clark pits the enduring success of the “degenerate art” against the eventual defeat of the Nazi regime. Suddenly, instead of smirking, we are reflecting on history, worrying about extremism and celebrating the power of art in overcoming both.
After graduating from his MA in Fine Art at Norwich University of the Arts this summer, Clark was the only artist to be selected for New Contemporaries and Saatchi Art’s Rising Stars this year: both lists seek to spot the next generation of influential artists. The online Saatchi list allows savvy collectors to invest immediately and click through to buy works, whereas New Contemporaries includes a touring exhibition, mentoring and bursary opportunities.
Despite the fact New Contemporaries has a 70-year history of talent spotting and a host of impressive alumni (Damien Hirst, Tacita Dean and Gillian Wearing to name a few), Clark appears relatively relaxed about the whole affair. From his tool box seat, he speaks softly and succinctly about his career progression from drawing around coasters at his nan’s house as a child, to doodling on the back of skateboards as a teenager in his home town of Ipswich, to, more recently, setting up the TBA artist collective. Over the course of our conversation, his quiet demeanour starts to reveal a steely determination.
“When you are making work for so long in one place, the same people are coming to your shows. You don’t really get critiqued and there is no one to necessarily push you,” Clark reflects. “New Contemporaries, Saatchi and my MA have all been good ways to push me – not just career-wise, but because I am in shows with loads of people who are really good, so I need to make even better work and keep going.”
At the New Contemporaries exhibition, Clark’s careful blend of striking humour and astute political commentary makes it easy to see why he was one of the 45 selected from 1,500 applicants. His painting on cardboard of a house covered in breasts with the message “a house with boobs for roof tiles” scrawled underneath is immediate and accessible. “My thinking is influenced a lot by how fast images [come and go] when scrolling through Instagram,” he explains. “Normally, when you see something, you want to instantly laugh or understand. You don’t want to have to scroll through four or five images to work out the joke. So there’s an element in my work where you look at something and you’re like, ‘I get it, it’s funny’ – and then afterwards it can play on your mind.”
Working across painting, drawing, photography, installation and video, Clark’s most recent output has focused on paintings that match colourful cartoons with snappy phrases: a dead doctor lays murdered at the feet of a man in a “pro-life” jumper, homeless people huddle behind a suited aristocrat proclaiming “balderdash, I’m we’re doing great”, and a KKK member in pink robes holds up a red sock to the words “white wash”. It is political painting without the preaching. Clark’s of-the-moment sketches stem from the fact that his creative process is driven by “whatever is around”.
“I am always carrying a sketchbook and a camera,” he adds. And his studio is plastered in his findings: scribbled ideas include “Jeff Bezos escaping burning Earth on a rocket” and “Earth sold to alien race by greedy politicians”.
Surrounded by notes about the apocalypse, the deception of social media and the corruption of the rich, I start to feel a bit unsettled. Is he hopeful about the future? His serious face suddenly lights up. “Yes. It is easy to be hopeful when you see Greta Thunberg. It is different to when I was a kid. When I got interested in politics, it was about listening to Rage Against the Machine, whereas nowadays children organise protests.” As Thunberg continues to hold governments to account and Hitler disappears into a pool of gunge, I cross my fingers and pray that by the time the predictions in Clark’s studio become fully fledged paintings, we still find them closer to tongue-in-cheek comedy than everyday life.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries is at South London Gallery, 6 December to 23 February.
