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Prunella Clough: Regions Unmapped

This book is the first on this subject and is a prime source of reference on Clough's art and thought. Embedded in this book is extensive research into the Clough Archive, now in the Tate, also into archives in private collections containing significant papers related to this subject. In addition oral history was collected through extensive interviews with Clough’s friends, peers and colleagues, all of which added to the depth and richness of nuance contained in this book. It adds further layers of interest to aspects of the art world during the second half of the 20th century; in particular, it brings out Clough’s contribution in the 1950s to the growing interest in the working class and the industrial environment, stimulated by the new social and cultural demographic. Specifically, Clough's factory scenes connect her art with the raft of radical social legislation that came in after 1945. The book is an essential source on her friendship with John Berger, on her teaching, her intellectual interests and her philanthropy, as well as on her private life and her close relationship with her famous aunt, the internationally renowned modernist architect and designer Eileen Gray. Rigorous attention is also paid to her exhibition history and to the steady growth of her professional reputation, at a time when the art world was still male-dominated, showing, by inference, how her achievement paved the way for Bridget Riley and the recognition accorded other women artists in more recent times. Throughout, Clough's development and position as an artist acts as a lens through which the reader encounters shifts in theory and practice over five decades.

Double-weighting is requested in connection with the scholarly endeavour, over three years, to reconstitute and examine Clough’s achievement, to contextualise it and to identify its main thematic concerns. No in-depth attempt had previously been made to identify sources, influences, connections or circumstantial details. With her executor’s help, I contacted key figures among her social and artistic circle, and studied her entire archive, recently acquired by the Tate. There were two other significant archives, in London and in Paris, also material in the possession of her friends. Many visits were made to view work by Clough in public and private collections.