| Project Title | It was a Stick |
| Location | Yorkshire Art Space, Exchange Studios, Secret Gallery |
| Date | November 2025 |
Artist Statement
Dave Clarkson is a contemporary performance-based land artist and creative specialist at Sheffield Hallam University. He graduated from Nottingham Trent University in 2009 and then completed his MA in Fine Art at Falmouth University in 2025.
Clarkson uses sculpture and installation to explore stories about land, class, and the ways people’s lives are shaped by history.
Growing up in a working-class community has deeply influenced his perspective, grounding his storytelling practice that brings overlooked histories to light. His work draws attention to the connections between people, places, and the past. Through hands-on making and collaboration, he creates pieces that invite reflection and spark conversation.
Clarkson believes art has the power to bring people together — helping us understand our shared histories and imagine new possibilities for the future.
Contextual Statement
This work explores the delicate relationship between a real cherry tree and oral memory, examining how family stories, memory, and loss intertwine across generations. Centred around the physical presence of a living tree and a multi-channel audio installation, the project investigates how memory is reconstructed—grafted together—through shared narratives.
The original cherry tree, once in the garden of my childhood council estate home, was thought to have been cut down by later owners. This absence became the starting point for the work. Interviews with family members reveal how memory is at once personal and collective: some details are remembered vividly, others are forgotten, and still others are filled in by assumption and shared narrative logic.
At the centre of the installation stands a real cherry tree—not as a static object, but as a living symbol of growth, fragility, and time. The tree’s presence is both immediate and symbolic: it references the original tree that is now gone, while also embodying its absence.
The audience is greeted with one large stretched printed canvas of the original house flanking the tree, prompting the audience to engage visually with memory. The co-mixture of image and narrative allows the work to make visible the intangible fragments of memory usually lost to storytelling alone.
A multi-channel sound piece layers unedited family conversations recalling the planting, growth, and eventual disappearance of the cherry tree. Directional speakers guide the visitor through the space, producing overlapping, fragmented, and at times silent narratives. Initially conceived as an experimental secondary component, this sound installation evolved into a central gesture: an act of listening, of dissolving into something vast yet intimate.
Silence is deliberately used where narratives break, allowing space for the audience’s own associations to emerge. Fragments of bronze casts placed on pillars beside the sound pieces contrast with the living tree. While the bronze fragments are solid and enduring, they are also incomplete, reflecting how memory persists while remaining partial. The tree embodies growth and impermanence; the bronze reflects permanence and fracture. Together, they establish a dialogue between ephemerality and endurance, between lived experience and its traces.
Site specificity is integral: the initial installation was installed at Yorkshire Artspace’s “Secret Gallery,” a former parking lot that amplifies themes of absence and recovery.
Ultimately, this work explores how we hold onto what is lost—not by monumentalizing it, but by creating spaces where memory can remain alive, contested, and shared. It invites audiences to reflect on their own stories: what they remember, what they forget, and how narratives shift over time.
Project Documentation
Special Thanks @ Chelsea Abbott Photography
I would like to extend my deepest thanks to my supervisors, Mary Anne Francis and Charlie Duck, whose expertise, patience, and insightful feedback were invaluable throughout the development of this research.
I am also thankful to all the faculty and staff of the Falmouth School of Arts for providing a supportive and stimulating environment. My appreciation also goes to my peers and friends for their thoughtful discussions and encouragement.
Finally, I am grateful to my partner Lynette for their unwavering support during this journey.