Skip to main content

In The Open | Thomas A Clark & Diane Howse

Thomas A Clark was born in Greenock, Scotland. His poetry has been consistently attentive to form and to the experience of walking in the landscape, returning again and again to the lonely terrain of the Highlands and Islands.

In 1973, with the artist Laurie Clark, he started Moschatel Press. At first a vehicle for small publications by Ian Hamilton Finlay, Cid Corman, Jonathan Williams, Simon Cutts and others, it soon developed into a means of formal investigation within his own poetry, treating the book as imaginative space, the page as a framing device or as quiet around an image or a phrase, the turning of pages as revelation or delay.
From 1986, Laurie and Thomas A Clark have run Cairn Gallery, one of the earliest of ‘artist-run spaces’, specialising in Land Art, Minimalism and a lyrical or poetic Conceptualism. After many years in the Cotswolds, the Clarks moved in 2002 to re-open the gallery in Pittenweem. In addition to his books and smaller publications, Clark has also made site-specific installations in galleries, in gardens or in the landscape, and has many works in permanent collections world-wide.

Diane Howse works with different materials and processes across territories of image, object, print and publishing. She often works collaboratively with other practitioners and combines her work as an artist with the role of curator. “a slow air” was shown earlier this year at the National Centre for Early Music in York and her work was recently included in Harvest, curated by Peter Foolen, at kunstraumlangenlois p.p. in Austria. Her piece “Stone Ghosts”, for the online journal The Learned Pig, was also published earlier this year (http://www.thelearnedpig.org/stone-ghosts/4356). She has worked with Thomas A Clark, on many different projects, including recently his exhibition “The Grove of Delight” at Harewood House in 2016. She also recently collaboratively produced a major project “The Silent Wild” across two venues - the Brontë Parsonage and Salts Mill - working with seven other practitioners in 2015.

a slow air

In fiddle music, the slow air is usually intended for listening rather than dancing. Usually restrained, but with virtuosic embellishments, it situates both performer and audience firmly within a recognised tradition.