Claire Greenshaw

Working primarily with drawing and sculpture, Claire Greenshaw uses bawdy humour and technical rigour to examine the boundaries of perception, the contingent nature of images and the legacy of patriarchy and capitalism in art history and culture. Greenshaw is interested in the drawing surface as a site or depository of embodied time; the remains of a laborious and meditative drawing process aimed at stretching the experience of looking and rendering. Employing the rudimentary touch of the pencil to explore and contrast the reification of touch through the now ubiquitous digital scroll, Greenshaw uses drawing to explore images as fictions, to probe the ineffable circulation of meaning and to generate a personal accumulation of lived time on the page.

Recently Claire produced a series of drawings that had punctures or holes cut in their surface that acted as viewing portals and as sites of perpetual flux in the picture plane. In a way, puncturing the surface of the drawings insisted on the images as physical grounds, or sites in ‘real space’ and posed questions about the materiality of drawing, and how we connect with other bodies in real and virtual space through digital and analogue forms.

For her Art Futures project, Claire extends this interest in holes, absence and contingencies. Claire’s project began with creating a double-sided image “Just Make Believe Like It’s Nothing”.  Dimensions Variable began as the structural support for the double-sided drawing to hang upon. As the work has developed the drawing that was the genesis of the project has become a study; the element originally conceived as the support has become the edition itself.

Two index fingers (the artist’s own) cast in bronze extend from the wall, as if having punctured the architecture, while the space between the fingers indicates a measurement of distance or the size of an absent form. The digits can be installed at different distances from one another, responding to the space they are in. The absent body, from one tip of the finger to the other can be stretched beyond reality to suggest a very large form or distance, or the fingers can be placed closer together to describe something more intimate.

The drawing that was central to the original concept, is now a reference. Claire has used her drawing of the iconic earth rising image and detritus from her studio and home to create 8 unique images, abstract arrangements that resemble absurd portraits of our ability to imagine and create at vastly variable dimensions (contemplating our place in the universe, chewing a wad of bubble gum).

An edition of 8, Claire’s project, Dimensions Variable, is available to Art Futures collectors for $1200 (+ shipping). The piece comprises a set of 2 bronze wall mounts, casts of the artists pointer finger on her right hand. Each pair of fingers is numbered and ready to mount directly into the wall. The bronze work comes carefully wrapped in a unique print, which can be framed. Click there here to select your unique print.  To become a patron of Claire’s and own this exclusive piece, email ihyw(at)iheartyourwork.com, to arrange payment of the 25% deposit by email transfer or cheque. Or pay a deposit simply and securely here: