1968, Lincolnshire: She was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in charity shops and carboot sales to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut from Slaughter House Five The artist, as an outsider, is ideally placed for picking up that which has been chucked out. Claire Brewster's work is about retrieving the discarded, celebrating the unwanted and giving new life to the obsolete. In between the glossy consumption of first-time retailed goods and those which are thrown out is the netherworld of the second hand and slightly used sourced from a myriad of flea markets, car-boot sales and charity shops. Perhaps you can tell as much about a society by what it throws out as by what it puts in its museums as mementos of prior existence. It is these forgotten pieces that provides Claire with much of her raw material and inspiration. A nostalgia and a genuine fascination with things, from another place or time and the desire to examine the overlooked feeds her creativity. From this starting point, Claire develops beautiful, intricate and desired work that is greater than the sum of its parts. Using maps and atlases that are rendered obsolete by the ever changing borders of countries Claire makes her entomological installations. The birds, insects and flower cut-outs transcend borders, they pass freely between countries and are then captured by Claire and put into shadow boxes to form entomological records of past times.Claire grew up in Lincolnshire, where you can see for miles without interruption. To fill these peaceful yet bleak empty landscapes she created her own artistic world. She has been living and working in London for over 20 years and now finds her inspiration from the urban environment she lives in. … Read More