The Diver’s Clothes Lying Empty: Domenico de Clario – A Survey 1966-1996

About the exhibition
This exhibition offered a thirty-year survey of the prolific artist Domenico de Clario, whose practice encompasses drawing, painting, assemblage, text and performance, as well as site-specific and installation work. Born in Trieste, Italy, in 1947 , de Clario was from a family that took part in the postwar migration to Australia in the 1950s, and would return to Italy many times as an adult, studying at the Brera Academy in Milan. Since de Clario approached art making as inseparable from life, this substantial mid-career survey exhibition was described by curator Edward Colless as, in a sense, autobiographical, or a ‘portrait’ of the artist.  Works included a performance of a game of squash under the full moon (Advantage of Seven, 1997) and the accumulative installation All of My Clothes, 1980–1997, 1997. Looking for revelation in life’s experiences, de Clario’s installations were described as having ‘the mood of an extended séance’.

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^{Image: Cropped photograph of Domenico de Clario (with a Shaker basket on his head) painting part of The Diver's Clothes Lying Empty, 1996, created in Sabbath Day Lake, Shaker Village, Maine, United States. Photo: Adam Fuss}