Apollo Magazine
Acquisitions of the Month: February 2024
9 March 2024
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Two works by Edmund Clark
The V&A has acquired two photographic works by the artist Edmund Clark (b. 1963), whose work primarily concerns the perniciousness of state control and repression. Control Order House (2012), the result of Clark gaining access to the house of an anonymous prisoner being kept under house arrest in the UK, will go on display in the V&A’s photography centre in June. Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition is a collection of photographs, taken by Clark in collaboration with the investigative journalist Crofton Black, which document secret detention sites for suspected terrorists in the United States. Both installations are accompanied by rigorous text-based research undertaken by Clark. Much like the work of groups such as Forensic Architecture, Clark’s output straddles the line between art and investigative journalism.