Ed Clark, Curated by Emma Lewis

An exhibition review of Ed Clark at Turner Contemporary, Margate from May-September 2024. Ed Clark (1926–2019) made innovative abstract works from the 1950s until the 2000s. Whilst he had been making and showing work at the margins of artistic centres with a sustained and ambitious practice, acknowledgement of his achievement has come only over the last decade or so. This recognition is deserved, and the Turner Contemporary show is testament to this. It is important however to acknowledge that critical tools are currently more attuned to consider the mechanisms of exclusion that prevented people from seeing Clark’s work and the work of other artists of colour. This tension, or an unsettled resolution, between Clark’s Black heritage and the communities of the white art world, underlies the exhibition as it sets a context for new audiences to see his work.