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Elly Clarke

Felixstowe/London
Artist interested in the role, value and performace of the physical body in the digital age. I explore this through photography, video, performance, music, curating and community engaged projects.
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I am an artist interested in the performance and the burden (‘the drag’) of the physical body in an increasingly digitally mediated world, as well as the snapping-to-grid of templates. I work with analogue and digital photography, video, music, and community-based projects – and [the archive of] #Sergina, a border-straddling, multi-bodied drag queen who, across one body and several, for close to fifteen years, sang and performed songs online and offline about love, lust and loneliness in the mesh of hyper-dis/connection. In this format, #Sergina (plural) performed in venues of all persuasions in the UK, Europe, Canada and the USA - including The Photographers Gallery, London; Brighton Digital Festival, SHOUT Festival, Birmingham; The Lowry, Salford Quays; and Bishopsgate Institute London as well as at academic conferences and symposiums. #Sergina has been shaped and embodied by many artists over this time, including Vladimir Bjelicic, Raul de Nieves, Katy Pendlebury, Thomas Doherty, Liz Rosenfeld, Matt Miwa, Kaajel Patel. Stephanie Telomore, Bon Mott, Kori Miles and Shiva Raichandani. 

My obsession as an artist is really about relationships in the context of an ever shifting digital context, and how we interact, converse, love and understand one another. I have closely followed - and participated in - the release of each mainstream technological ‘development’ since the mid 1990s. And #Sergina (unexpectedly!) became the key (15 year) work through which I charted, responded to and shed light on things like mobile phone obsession, data extraction, shifts in working life, isolation and political polarisation.

I have exhibited my photographic, audio and performance work internationally, including at Galerie Wedding, Berlin; Kiasma, Helsinki; Franklin Furnace, New York; The Other Gallery, Banff, Canada, Milton Keynes Gallery and Techno Park Studios, Melbourne, and have taught widely - include at Munich Akademie den Bildene Kunste; Birmingham City University; Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne; Coventry University; Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Goldsmiths, Central Saint Martins and BIMM London. 

From 2008-13 I ran Clarke Gallery out of my 2-room apartment in Berlin, later taking exhibitions elsewhere and have curated extensively. In 2025. I completed my practice led PhD at Goldsmiths in Art. Exploring the drag of physicality in the digital age alongside a study of early netcast performances commissioned and presented by Franklin Furnace in New York, 1998-2000, the thesis can be read here.

My work is generally both collaborative and site responsive. Having made the decision to archive #Sergina, I am now seeking a site to show this fifteen year project, alongside moving back towards photography in its expanded form/s. 

Lived Experience

I live between London and Felixstowe, finding that the tranquility of the latter helps me deal with and rejoice in the fullness of London. Each place enables me to think and perceive differently - the mix works well. 

For 10 years I lived in Berlin, where I ran Clarke Gallery and was in a few different bands. I've also lived in Birmingham, Leeds, Colchester and New York. Behind all this tech obsessed stuff is a deep concern for ecology, the climate and education, which is crucial for getting ourselves to a better place politically, ecologically and in terms of human and planetary health. 

In 2019, together with two other PhD researchers, I set up CHASE Climate Justice Network, through which we organised symposiums, sharing events, residencies and managed a small grants programme to support the production of site specific creative and artistic projects via an Open Call. More recently we devised and developed the Climate Justice Conversation Card game, to facilitate conversations between early researchers in the arts and humanities to consider the impact of research methods in the wider context of climate justice. Click HERE to play this game - with others! - online. 

 

Drag/ged Objects (Darkroom Edition)

Half Crowns in their Petticoats Reloaded

The Archive Of #Sergina

#Sergina's Desperately Delicious Data Extraction Instrument [Los Angeles, 2025].

#Sergina's Desperately Delicious Dirty Data

Dragging the Archive - Bishopsgate Institute

You don’t need any objects ever - with Kate Mahoney

Drag/ged Objects

Dragging the Archive - a personal re:encounter with Franklin Furnace's Cyber Beginnings by Elly Clarke

Wandsworth Words

HOW ARE YOU? #Sergina’s Participatory Soap Opera about Wrestling with Wellbeing in the Digital Age (7 hours), 2020

#SERGINA’S REWATCHABLE WEBINAR ABOUT RELATIONSHIP ADVICE IN A TIME OF COVID, 22.10.20

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Curated

The Animal Double

By Uma Breakdown

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