Yuko, Artist'S Book ,2004
Provenance :
Exhibited : Smithsonian Libraries, Washington DC, Artist’s Books and Africa, from 16 September 2015, a similar example, Bits and Pieces (2006), was exhibited.
Literature : Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin (2011) Listening to Distant Thunder: The Art of Peter Clarke, Johannesburg: Standard Bank, a similar example, What's New? (2001) is illustrated in colour on page 184.
Notes : This work consists of a hand-made, accordion-fold, paper-collage book in a hand-made ornamental box. The inscription on the book reads 'This collage Yuko was made in May 2004, Ocean View, WC [Western Cape], South Africa'. Various types of paper have been used including pages from magazines.
The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, has a similar example in its collection, Bits and Pieces (2006), acquisition no. 2014-9-1: Peter Clarke first tried his hand at collage in the 1950s after discovering the work of German artist Kurt Schwitters (1887–1922), who pioneered modern collage-making … Clarke is drawn to the improvisational nature of collage ... [His] own affinity for recycling junk mail, advertisements, and packaging resonates with Schwitters’s proclivity to collect bits and pieces … [Clarke] mimics the ‘interior decorating’ in South African squatter settlements where walls are papered over with pages from colourful magazines, commercial packaging, and other scraps of paper.
Clarke made his first ornamental box in 1975 by chance when he had a remnant section of a mailing tube, which he covered inside and out … He is enchanted by the notion of portability, of carrying around a work of art: 'You can’t carry around a precious work of art. But with this, you can sit next to someone and lift the book out of its little box and say, I've got something beautiful to show you'1 ... When lifted out of the box, the zigzag folds can be stretched out or snaked around.
1. Quoted in Donvé Lee (2006) Peter Clarke: Following Dreams and Finding Fame, Johannesburg: Awareness, page 34.
Adapted from https://library.si.edu/exhibition/artists-books-and-africa/bits-and-pieces-full
