As we enter into the last stretch of 2020, DRAF Broadcasts is here for the ride with a brand new Podcast and On Screen Special.

Listen to artist Caroline Achaintre talk about her favourite piece in the David Roberts Collection; a sculpture by Berlinde de Bruyckere. The podcast gives an insight into Achaintre’s own practice and influences – from ‘uncanny valley’ to Japanese figurines from sci-fi B films.

Screening now is a beautifully crafted film by Declan Clarke that speaks to both sociopolitical and personal histories. It has been chosen and introduced by Pádraig Timoney, who like Achaintre is an artist with work featured in the David Roberts Collection and who has been invited to share thoughts about a fellow artist’s film he admires.

Caroline Achaintre has chosen to discuss the sculpture Lost II (2007) by Berlinde De Bruyckere in this month’s podcast, which explores works from the David Roberts Collection.

She is drawn to the different layers of experience when encountering a work by De Bruyckere. In this case – a sculpture of a spineless horse carcass, draped over a domestic wood table – it is the space between attraction and repulsion. Together the horse and table are at once strange and familiar, qualities Achaintre also strives for in her own work.

“On childhood and adolescent family trips from Dublin, Clarke very often went to visit the farm of close relatives on his mother’s side, in South Armagh. Going to the relations, a most natural journey, meant crossing the border, and soon provoked a wrenching curiosity into the situation of the border areas of [removed]#8221;

So writes Pádraig Timoney in his introduction of Declan Clarke‘s Group Portrait with Explosives (2014). At 42 minutes this filmic collage makes great evening viewing, as it fuses personal history, archive footage and new source material to piece together the role of industrial products from former Czechoslovakia in the Irish Troubled eras.

The work and introduction text are available to watch and read until 23 December:

WATCH GROUP PORTRAIT WITH EXPLOSIVES

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Caroline Achaintre
She-Balls, 2011
Ceramic, leather
29 x 20 x 8cm

Originally trained as a blacksmith before coming to London in the late 90s to study art, Caroline Achaintre’s works often reference craft traditions, be it by hand tufting wool, basket weaving or working with clay and ceramics. Whilst she creates abstract forms, the final pieces have a strong sense of personality and bodily presence, often with carnivalesque and playful tones.

She-Balls is no exception. The pattern that forms the base is reminiscent of an animal skin – particularly the crosshatching found on snakes, lizards or armadillos (‘little armoured one’ in Spanish). This idea of protecting what lies beneath continues when reading the ceramic form as a mask-like shape. The mask has the potential to conceal emotions that lie beneath, present a false pretence, or in this case perhaps even fetishise the wearer.

DRAF, 111 Great Titchfield Street, W1W 6RY. Phone: 020 7383 3004
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* The David Roberts Art Foundation Limited is a registered charity in England and Wales (No. 1119738) and a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (No. 6051439) at 17 Hanover Square, London W1S 1BN. It is proudly supported by the Edinburgh House Estates group of companies.