Martina Clarke

This work is part of Curatorial+Co.'s 2026 group exhibition, 'The Beast In Me'.

Of all the internal mechanisms that drive us, perhaps the most primordial is the beast. We expel the animal, the bodily, the base in favour of the intellect, yet it is the beast that holds what is most irreducibly human—impulses and desires that precede thought: love, rage, care, protection, connection. The very thing we suppress is also the thing that touches what is most vital.

Martina Clarke's paintings explore her deeper subconscious. The body folds in on itself, a sense of heaviness and gravity giving momentum to the figure. Multiple limbs are recognisable, but it’s uncertain whether there is still one person or many. The abstraction of the body pushes it to the limits of creature, animal, and cryptid. Yet still, that heaviness remains a deep feeling that belongs to the human spirit.