I write: I inhibit my sheet of paper, I invest it, I travel across it, 2020 (ongoing series), Biro on stonehenge paper. 28.5 x 38 cm per work. Images courtesy of the artist.

Harriett Clark

With the removal of access to a busy studio life, surrounded by many other creatives all sharing and building from one another, we’ve been reduced to the constraints of our households. Perhaps lucky for me, I’ve got four others also living within the same inner-city terrace house walls. A geographer, a french teacher, a carpenter, a uni student, and me - an art student - currently completing my Honours year in Fine Arts. The space has become increasingly communal, a configurement of desks and work spaces with no walls separating us.

This has resulted in many hours of blankly staring off into the room. Zoning into sounds I’ve never noticed. Humms, buzzes and clickings from absolutely everything.

Although many downfalls have come from COVID-19, time and engagement with our surroundings is something which I feel society has caught a glimpse of again. Disconnecting from the continual connection of devices to take advantage of those little moments outside of the house, or the few interactions which are had with others. Whether we are aware of these interactions or not, it can be as simple as noticing the character of someone who lives on your street, or having a conversation with the cashier; something more can come from these incidental interactions within this time.

I've gone about taking this new found time and space to record these unconscious minglings.

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Harriett Clark is an emerging Sydney-based artist. Currently completing her Honours in Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design, she has a multi-disciplinary practice with printmaking at the centre. Clark’s practice often explores the presence of the self and observations of the other within the surrounding environments of the everyday.