Claire Bailey

Claire Bailey dismantles and reconnects objects in imaginative ways, in a seemingly random process to achieve a built form. Every arrangement harks back to her preoccupation with time, evolution and music.

Over many years, Claire has kept the focus on the alchemy of assemblages of found objects, very often using whimsy and humour to create strange machines with mysterious purposes. Clocks, wheels, bones and musical instruments are her favoured components.

Bailey won the People’s Choice Award for the 2016 Bankwest Art Prize for Sculpture and is represented in numerous public and private collections. She holds a Diploma of (Sculpture) from Claremont School of Art and has exhibited widely.

FEATURED WORK

2022

During the early stages of the pandemic Bailey was employed by WA Museum Boola Bardip to help install the displays and artefacts for the new museum. This provided the opportunity to consider our place in history and all times leading up to this point; how subjective history is, who gets forgotten and who gets to make history. This gave rise to the idea of making a fossil that you can’t place in time, is it real or total fantasy, will it outlast, or be broken down and made into something else? Will it end up in a museum?