SCARLETT CARLOS CLARKE: THE SMELL OF CALPOL ON A WARM SUMMER’S NIGHT
DENIZ AKKAYA
Cob presents Scarlett Carlos Clarke’s first solo exhibition, The Smell of Calpol on a Warm Summer’s Night.
In this richly imagined expression of all the awkwardness and anxiety of the present moment, Carlos Clarke meditates on the new intensities of domestic life, motherhood and isolation, and the restless mix of intimacy and distance that has become the hallmark of quarantine. On the one hand, a virtualized world mediated by the numbing electric lights of phone and TV screens; on the other, the overwhelming inevitability of four walls and a screaming toddler at 2 am. The exhibition presents an immersive installation featuring sculptural, photographic and sensory works that transform the gallery into a space that resonates with this confusing contradiction.
Madonna and child are re-imagined in a suburban living room, snuggled into a plush leather armchair, bathed in the blue light of the ad’s stylized opulence and the sticky panacea of strawberry-pink paracetamol. These are some of the highlights of Carlos Clarke’s reflections on motherhood exacerbated by Covid-19. Sucrose pumped, stuck in a glass box – energy and lethargy. Desiring opposite things at the same time. As the artist himself puts it: ‘the craving for confusion and chaos, the craving for control; to feel chained, to feel free; feeling safe and vulnerable; feeling weak and strong; feeling bored and wildly excited; to feel alone’. A life lived in these contradictions is at the core of Carlos Clarke’s interpretation of the transcendent, exhausted mother: a life-giving and energy source, shaped by a sculpture of a breastfeeding torso at the centre of the exhibition. And the’ living room ‘ is where it all happens – the beach of the present, which always appears on the horizon.
The sense of being ‘contained’ or ‘framed’ in various ways simultaneously in a swollen body, an armchair, an anteroom, or a maternal bond is key to Carlos Clarke’s work. The subject of his photographs, like the person visiting the gallery space, is framed in a meticulously crafted home environment where comfort itches and security suffocates: a world of interiors only. Thick carpets and soft furnishings play a role in the pesky tactility collapse that the term suggests, as well as the feeling of drowning in our invisible “bubbles.” Out-of-shot glowing pixels suggest some temporary escape routes, even if it’s just visual anesthesia. This is a critical and urgent response to the conditions we have become accustomed to as long as we do not compromise.
