Elly Clarke is interested in the influence of the online on the offline, mobility upon stillness and mobile communication upon conversation and the place of the physical body/object in our increasingly digitally-mediated world, as well as the distancing effect of the screen. She is interested in the impact of networks, mobility and communication technology upon our relationships with ourselves, other people and the environment as well as upon our concept of history and the ways in which histories are learned and narrated.
Over the past decade, Clarke has produced several major participatory projects that have demanded close interaction with different groups of people: from her East London Council Estate neighbours (The Broadway House Photo Project) to passengers on the Trans Siberian Train (Moscow to Beijing); from small businesses and community centres in Birmingham (FRAME_) to owners of portraits by a Victorian artist (The George Richmond Portrait Project). Clarke works with photography (analogue & digital, mobile phones and screen-grabs), video, performance, drawing, slide shows, songs, text, participatory, web-based, selling and curatorial intervention.
Elly Clarke has a MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and a first class degree in History of Art from Leeds and her work has been exhibited in venues that include Kiasma Museum, Helsinki; London Gallery West, London; The Banff Centre, Canada; National Centre of Contemporary Art, Moscow & Milton Keynes Gallery.