Clare Longley

Eyelashes cling in hot wax, left drying and crusting with salt

Actions that improved our ancestors’ chances of surviving and reproducing

Too close for me too carry on my brain when my heart is just a puddle

Such a big sloppy smoochy wet puddle

I am the result of reproduction, I am heart eyed actioning the actions

Drawing from recognized visual artifices and stimulators known to arouse a sense of universal pleasure in viewers

I tried to make art about vast ideas; I love the idea of big ideas

Seemingly distant theories

Blinks black legs between thighs

Ringlets drop heavy springs for now honey

Honey, baby

This time around

Turns out I just made an exhibition about falling in love in the summer, I didn’t even realize until now

Have you ever fallen in love in the summer?

This is remix, re-remix

What I thought in the begining, a love poem, how I feel about these things

So oily, can never catch it, can never make up my mind

Have you ever had trouble doing what you love?

Doing who you love, baby

Slippery and saccharine and very firm

It causes all sorts of problems when you do, at least for me

Polyps appear on your shoulders, they expand, shrink

Symptoms of sunlight, transitional being

Swelling, oozing but welcomed, you watch for fresh buds

Humans have developed powerful emotional responses

It’s all there… the horizon, the sunset, the beauty, oh the beauty, I’ve always fallen for beauty

The sunset is what gets me though, I feel the most beautiful when the sun in horizontal,

almost butter

Universal bedrocks of attractiveness – well that’s something

I mostly meant the sunset, the way you see it when you can feel in on your blushing cheeks

The way you see it on walls of lobbies and waiting rooms, beside an ugly curtain, and a frangipani, or a rose

Cold water from a plastic cup a damp kiss when the weather drops

Something falling not quite all the way through my clammy palms

Like sand in between your toes (oh don’t you love the feeling of sand between your toes)

Knock knock (butterflies scream in the dark pits of your gut)

What a beautiful home / you look lovely / this meal is delicious / incredible view / thanks for having me

Wanting to touch everything, feel it – the vase, aromatic soap, rim of the glass

Still a dirty puddle

Like a squeeze to sunburned or raw neck

Waves hello, thank you forever

Clare Longley is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Melbourne, Australia. Graduating from Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) in 2014, Longley’s recent solo and group exhibitions include Massage Therapy, Kings Artist-Run, VIC, 2017; Carousel, Abbotsford Convent Industrial School, VIC, 2016; Recharge/Her performance as part of Buoy Residency and Retreat, NY, 2016; Nut Ice, Tinning Street Presents, VIC, 2016; Flush, collaboration with Prue Stent and Honey Long, Sugar Mountain Festival, VIC, 2016; and The Ladies Exhibition, aMBUSH Gallery, NSW, 2016.

Image | Clare Longley, The eiffel tower at sunset from your living room, 2017, detail, digital print on silk, tin, pine, clay, dimensions variable. Photo Aaron Rees. Courtesy the artist.

THANKS FOR HAVING ME

Clare Longley