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Helen Manning Clark


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About
Helen Manning Clark is an established painter-printmaker whose abstract works affirm her as an incredibly gifted colourist. Glowing colours and painterly marks convey luminous, sensual and unique images inspired by flowering plants and both natural and urban landscapes.

Dense textures and multiple forms help create these dynamic compositions, built up with overprinting and instinctive marks of bold colour. In other works Helen utilises delicate mark making and pale washes to form lighter sunlit images. Etching adds a further dimension with closely observed linear overprinting .

Manning Clark values the abstract painterly qualities that monoprinting gives her but it’s her experimental and expressive use of the medium that works draw the viewer into the vivacious warmth of the artist’s imagination.



Background

Manning Clark studied Printed Textiles at Middlesex, continuing her studies at the Royal College of Art in London where her paintings and drawings became the major influence on her design work. In 1983 she received an MA and a travelling scholarship, where she painted extensively in the landscapes of the southern Mediterranean, a subject which inspired a subsequent series of large paintings and textile designs.

While at the Royal College, Manning Clark co-founded the interdisciplinary design group “The Cloth” with colleagues Fraser Taylor, Brian Bolger and David Band. The Cloth specialized in strong, painterly textile designs as well as group and solo painting exhibitions. The group designed textile collections for clients such as Paul Smith, Betty Jackson, Yves Saint Laurant, Calvin Kline and Nicole Miller, selling work and exhibited extensively in New York, Japan, Paris, London and Italy. They produced their own clothing collections which sold in major stores including Saks Fifth Avenue, Harrods and Liberty of London, and across Europe, America and Japan. Textiles designed by The Cloth were also acquired by the V&A in London to add to their permanent collection, and more recently many pieces have been acquired by Glasgow School of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago in the USA for their archives.

Manning Clark continued painting in her Bermondsey studio until 1995 having two major solo exhibitions at L’Escargot, London and producing images for Glynebourne Festival Opera, Levis, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Island Records amongst others.  In 2000, Manning Clark started experimenting with printmaking techniques, producing monoprints and etchings at the Artichoke Print Studios, London. This has developed into the large scale, painterly work that has been exhibited Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions (and shown on the BBC Culture Show in 2010), the Southbank Gallery and at the Affordable Art Fairs in London since 2006. She was an invited artist to the Mall Galleries exhibitions and in 2015 was selected by Ian Davenport for the Griffin Gallery Exhibition, London. Helen’s work is held in many private collections around the world.

In 2014, Helen’s printed textiles were exhibited, along with her colleagues at The Cloth, at the widely acclaimed and influential “From Club to Catwalk” exhibition at the V&A in London. In the same year, Helen returned to New York and with a subsequent visit to Chicago, has been working on a series of large scale pieces inspired by her visits.

Helen Manning Clark lives and works in London.



Exhibitions
2015: Group Show, Griffin Gallery, London
2014: From Club to Catwalk, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
2011, 2010: The Summer Shows, Royal Academy, London
2011: Artichoke Group Show, Bankside Gallery, London
2006 – 2014: Affordable Art Fairs (Artichoke stand), London
2009: Contemporary Print Open, The Mall Gallery, London
2006: Artichoke Group Show, R.K.Burt Gallery, London
2014, 2007, 2006: Lincolnshire National Print Open, Burton upon Humber, North Lincolnshire, UK
2006: Artichoke Group Show, Clifford Chance, Canary Wharf, London
1988 – 91: Group Show, Association of Illustrators Gallery, London
1989, 1988: Solo Shows, L’Escargot, London
1988: Glyndebourne Gallery, Glyndebourne
The Victoria and Albert Museum, Public Collection (with The Cloth)
1986: The Cloth Group Show, Olympia, London
1985:  The Cloth, Oliver and Pink, London
1985: The Cloth, Compass Gallery, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Dundee, Scotland
1985, 1983: The Cloth Group Show, The Thumb Gallery, London
1984: The Cloth Touring Group Show, Compass Gallery, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen
1983: Group Show with The Cloth, Oliver and Pink Gallery, London
1983: The Music Show, The Thumb Gallery, London

Publications
2013: Sonnet Stanfill, From Club to Catwalk: 80’s Fashion, The Victoria and Albert Museum Press, London
2012: Colin Gale and Megan Fishpool, The Printmakers’ Bible, Bloomsbury
2012: Forward by Linda Perry, British Textiles, 1700 to the Present.
V&A Books
2009: Marnie Fogg, 1980’s Fashion Print, Anova Books
2009: Megan Fishpool, Hybrid Prints, A&C Black
2006:Colin Gale, Etching and Photopolymer Intaglio Techniques, A&C Black
2002: Lesley Jackson, Twentieth Century Pattern Design, Textile and Wallpaper Pioneers, Princeton Architectural Press pp208
1999: Ngozi Ikoku, The Victoria and Albert Museum’s Textile Collection, British Textile Design from 1940 to Present, V&A Publications, pp 15, 23, 110
1996: Christopher Freyling & Claire Catterall, One Hundred Years of Design at the Royal College of Art, Barrie & Jenkins, pp76
1987: Catherine McDermott, Street Style - British Design in the 80’s, Design Council
1986: John Thackara, New British Design, Thames and Hudson, pp 97, 101
1985: Lorraine Johnston & Iain R Webb, New British Design The Fashion Year Volume III, Zomba Books pp 106, 129, 130,

Articles
Design Magazine, January 1985
Sunday Telegraph, January 27, 1985
The Standard, March 12, 1985
Women’s Wear Daily, 9 April, 1985
Newsweek, April 1985
The Scotsman, May 1985
Menswear, July 4, 1985
Design, August 1985
Blitz, October 1985
Creative Review, December 1985
The Guardian, January 1985
Interview Magazine, October 1984
The Standard, July 3, 1984
Drapers Record, October 6, 1984
Women’s Wear Daily, October 9, 1984
The Times, August 30, 1983

Teaching and Lectures 1985 – 1991
Duncan of Jordanstone School of Art, Dundee –  Courses on Printed Textiles
School of Art and Design, Trent University, Nottingham – Lecture on Printed Textiles
School of Art and Design, University of Derby – Course on Printed Textiles
The Mall Gallery, London – Lecture on Printed Textiles