Fractal Moon and other Works
- Jock Clutterbuck

OPENING NIGHT Tuesday 6 May 6pm to 8pm

Jock Clutterbuck’s sculptures and prints have a distinctive aura, one that seems to ‘flesh out something from nothing’ as if ‘naming the nameless by poetic invention.’ 1 This enigmatic condition suggests his art is composed of an intangible language of beauty, an oneiric divinity that touches us by incorporating the unknown into our contemporary perception. Clutterbuck admits that his ‘imagination participates in a greater field of imagination,’ a universe within and beyond its scope of knowability, beyond its colourations, dream fractals, and deep space. This is what we see and sense in his exquisite bronze sculptures and vibrant etchings, where pyramids rise, arc or converge, and where orbs and circles seemingly float or pivot. These enhance the paradoxes of open and closed forms so essential to sculpture. His polished totems transform the archaic into exotic monuments, and like his etchings, they pay homage to moons, stars, the sun and natural phenomena, all emblematic sources that humankind have honoured for millennia. But Clutterbuck is also grounded in and inspired by the Australian landscape—it is ingrained in his psyche and embedded within his art.

– Essay excerpt by Dr Sheridan Palmer 2025*

Full exhibition catalogue essay here

View exhibition catalogue here

^[1] Jock Clutterbuck quoted from his essay in Listening to the Stars, an artists’ book jointly published by Jock Clutterbuck and Tate Adams, Lyrebird Press, James Cook University, Townsville Queensland  2001.

*Dr Sheridan Palmer is a Fellow of the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Select passages of this essay are drawn from her recent article ‘Jock Clutterbuck: Timeless Duration’, in Artist Profile, Issue 70