Nicholas Jolly - Charity Work

‘On no account,’ warns Gavin Clark, self-styled man of letters, flâneur and connoisseur of ‘thrift-store art’, “should anyone interested in my collection attempt a viewing in a state of complete, unmitigated sobriety.” To these ends I arranged to meet at the Jolly Butcher pub, not far from his flat in Stoke Newington where he insisted, despite the evident hostility of the locals, that we brazen it out with Camparis and lemonade complete with plump maraschino cherries.
Clark would be the first to admit that his penchant for thrift-store paintings is not an entirely original conception. As the name itself implies the initial inspiration for a collection of artworks gleaned solely from the dank depths of charity shop, junk store and flea market was American artist, Jim Shaw, who in 1995 exhibited 185 anonymous works found at the Salvation Army and other places, at Metro Pictures in New York. Despite being on this side of the Atlantic, Clark continues to refer to his collection as ‘thrift store’ in deference to the genre, which this seminal show defined.

For Shaw the exercise was a knowing and tricksy play in issues of authorship, taste, professionalism, and, inevitably, context. However, by dangling these dainty morsels before the public’s gaze in an all too sophisticated NYC way, he came perilously close to assuming the role of ringmaster to a stable of circus freaks or a western manufacturer taking advantage of sweat shop labour rates in the Third World. This impression could well be reinforced by a recent article in the Big Issue which made the claim, apocryphal we hope, that Charles Saatchi has offered a sum of £100,000 to purchase the collection.

Clark neatly sidesteps such accusations by the clever ploy of being almost entirely unknown in the art world, not being a practicing artist himself, and by being as likely to exhibit at Metro Pictures as Rolf Harris (or on reflection even less). He offers, therefore, to a very limited audience the unique experience of viewing his collection in near perfect surroundings.

After our third Campari, Clark deems it time to make our way to Walford Road where he and the collection are impermanently housed. One the way he tells me of the perverse satisfaction he gains from discovering that one of his close neighbours is art critic Matthew Collings, who wilfully throws his career away ‘up West’ as groupie-in-chief of YBA-dom whilst being oblivious to an aesthetic goldmine here on his own doorstep.

Entering the gloomy Victorian villa to the cold clack of worn linoleum, one is immediately reassured that this is not a standard visit to a sterile art space but an altogether richer encounter. Unscrewing a bottle of retsina, Clark tells me about his initial foray into the wonderful world of thrift. He made his first acquisition during 1995 from a charity shop in Clapham High Street “I noted with curiosity the shopkeeper’s attitude towards the artwork of my selection,” he recalls. He seemed to consider it worthless. When I asked how much he wanted for it he said £4 at first, then hastily bartered himself down to £2 with a dismissive wave of the hand, as if the painting’s presence in his shop was an insult in the first place and in any case degrading to the quality stock of grubby white trainers and pink polyester shirts.”

What Clark gained was a magnificent work which he has titled Flamenco Dancer, Charging Bull and Matador, a robust and brusquely painted paean to the existential duality of death and sex which might have had Georges Bataille weeping into his Ricard for joy.

Walking up the vertiginous maroon stairwell which houses the bulk of the collection, I am deluged by images raging from the domestic to the baroque. Here, a pair of expressively painted horses galloping through water the consistency of whipped cream and, there, a naked Asian bather dallying in a secret mountain lake. Further on, a painting entitled Pint Glass with Wilting Daisies with Miniature Mongolian Folk Dancer pushes credulity to the limits. One of Clark’s personal favourites is an acrylic interpretation of the face of God, done in gold paint hovering in a constellation of purple planets.

Thanks to Shaw’s pioneering work Clark has realised that the power and the value of a thrift-store collection lies in a disciplined selection policy. As he rightly points out, not every painting one finds in a junk shop necessarily qualifies as ‘thrift-store art’ and not every painting can be had for under a tenner. It is this combination of instinct, penury and adherence to Shaw’s guiding light which informs his choices.

Pretty well-oiled and expansive by this stage, Clark is emboldened to theorise. He points out that one of his chief selection criteria is what he calls the “bugger this for a game of dominoes effect.” After starting out with some enthusiasm to paint, for example, a cowboy wearing a marvellous Stetson hat, an artist will suddenly realise after a quite convincing start that he completely lacks the requisite skill to draw arms, legs or indeed a horse, but will swiftly daub them in anyway. The resulting works often exhibit an alarming sense of composition and proportion. A finally modelled face or torso will peter out into flat vestigial claws in the place of hands and feet.

Other selection categories begin to emerge. There is, for example, a broad strand running through the collection of what could be called Adolescent Anarcho-Symbolism. Here the artist is seized by a desire of self-expression so strong that all editorial control over the haphazard jumble of symbolic elements is jettisoned. They are simply shoved into the composition wherever they may fit. This is typified by Head of a Woman with Glass of Campari and Skull. Thinly rendered on a vibrant two-toned background of pink and turquoise, an oversized cocktail glass holds sway over a chaotic composition depicting the pouting head of a woman, a half-smoked cigarette, a dove, a candle flame and an incompletely decayed skull still tenaciously clinging to the contents of one of its eye sockets.

Another area is that of the Armchair Traveller. Well represented in the collection, these depict images of exotic locations and foreign travel. Far from being cheery remembrances of past holidays, these pictures read more as a projection of a whole host of psycho-sexual problems and a deep desire for release from the mundaneness of daily existence. A particular painting entitled Concorde starkly sums up this craving for liberty. The jetstream from a diminutive aircraft slices the canvas horizontally into two. Below sits a cityscape vaguely reminiscent of Braque’s Houses at L’Estaque but rehashed via the sensibilities of 1970’s wallpaper design. Above hovers that poignant symbol of freedom, the eagle.

Draining the bottle to the dregs we are left to ponder what exactly makes thrift-store painting so compelling. In the end what Clark finds seductive is the mystery that lies behind each work. He speculates at the lives hinted at by the brief signatures on some of the canvases. Who is KEZ? Where are you now, Miriam Collin? Why did you bother in the first place, R.Baker?

James Ensor, the Belgian symbolist, once commented that the individuality of artists lies in the mistakes that they make. Based on this view, Clark’s collection exhibits a spirit of great individuality indeed.