Matthew Clarke, Taxi I’m lost, it's Melbourne, 2020, Flinders Street, Swanston Street, Fivex Art Prize, self portrait
Summary
Born in Warrnambool, Victoria, Matthew Clarke identifies as an artist with disabilities. He trained as a painter at the South West TAFE and works mainly in acrylic on linen. His artworks are characterised by an exuberant, busy and often highly coloured visual language that gives each piece an immediacy and dynamism – something it shares with much street art. His strongly graphic style, bold lines and flattened perspectives create joyful off-kilter vision of our often rather more prosaic world.
In part, this work was made for the Fivex Art Prize, an annual art award inaugurated in 2020 for an electronic billboard for display on the corner of Flinders and Swanson Streets. A figure standing, right arm raised in the universal salute of hailing a taxi, the painting was purchased for the collection in February 2020. Clarke says of it: ‘This painting titled “Taxi I’m lost, it’s Melbourne” is a self-portrait. It’s how I feel as an artist with a disability coming to Melbourne. I feel the sizes, colours, proportions and light is exciting and overwhelming. Sometimes when I am lost, we call a taxi and there is a sense of relief and it’s time for humour after we have got in.’
