New work
- Jock Clutterbuck

Jock Clutterbuck is a sculptor and printmaker of international significance, known for his highly sophisticated abstract forms executed with precision and detail, which emanate with a profound sense of underlying esoteric mysticism. 

Clutterbuck’s work, both sculptural and works on paper, draw on cartouche-like arrangements with a demarcated outer perimeter, a graphic boundary of containment for the pictograms within. His new work continues to evolve, masterfully exploring spiritual and philosophical ideas through two and three-dimensional forms. 

Australian Galleries is thrilled to present Recent Work – an extensive series of new sculptures and etchings by Jock Clutterbuck, which continue building upon key themes developed throughout his career.

‘With Jock Clutterbuck there is of course the formalist element, mandatory for any serious artist, and there is also the Romantic gut response, for example, he is amazed by the celestial heavens at night or by the sound of silence in the bush, but I think that there is also a further element, an unusual element, that places his art into a separate category. His art and his life are imbued with a mystical philosophy, a profound quest for making sense of our world – the way it functions – and the way things appear in it. He calls this a ‘knowledge journey’. This is not an example of ‘new ageism’ or a tokenistic nod to Zen philosophy or holistic theories of the ‘world spirit’, but a profound, detailed and all absorbing study over many decades of complex and frequently arcane texts…

Many artists ascribe to what Wassily Kandinsky termed as Kleine Welten, where each artwork is an autonomous microcosm. In Clutterbuck’s art each piece is a self-contained ‘small world’, complete within itself, yet endlessly and intimately relating to a broader series and to a bigger universe. In the decisive years, 1967-72, the artist commenced his ‘wisdom journey’ from the local and the parochial to the universal and the timeless. The concern with how we relate to the universe, how the individual relates to the whole and how we can fully realise the potential of what it means to be human emerged as key preoccupations of his art for the next few decades.’ 

– Sasha Grishin, 2020