Clearance. Emilie Bausager. January 13 - February 11, 2023

CLEARANCE

The scene of an accident or crime is the place where it happened.

When painting a landscape there are three categories in which to define the view you are portraying; pastoral, picturesque and the sublime. Let us call these ‘PPS’. 

PPS defines three competing ways of looking at nature through our ability to control the natural world whilst reminding us of our fragility within it.

The definition of "clearance" (as it relates to the Highland Clearances) is debatable. 

During much of the clearances; landowners tended to use the word "removal" to refer to the eviction of tenants. However, by 1843, "clearance" had become a general and derogatory word to describe the activities of Highland landlords. 

Its use was ambiguous, as for some it meant the displacement of large numbers of people from a single place at one time. For others, the eviction of a single tenant at the end of a lease could be termed "clearance". 

landscapes are heavily freighted with moral and symbolic worth as ecological paradigms and as rightful common inheritances, while spurned as scenically frivolous.

You can use this word whether the area is attractive or not.

The clearance period showed the changing landscape both physically and mentally of the highland areas from a Tribal family to a capitalist arrangement. The changing economic priorities of landlordism removed the cottar class from their homes to make way for large scale pastoral farming to support the wool and textile industry. 

A map is a diagrammatic representation of an area of land or sea showing physical features, cities, roads, etc.

In any pre-industrial society, land was a primary unit of resource.

Unit is an individual thing or person regarded as single and complete, but which can also form an individual component of a larger or more complex whole.

"large areas of land made up of smaller units"

Mountaineering is the sport of reaching, or trying to reach, high points in mountainous areas, mainly for the joy and thrill of the climb. 

In mathematics, the mountain climbing problem is a problem of finding the conditions that two functions forming profiles of a two-dimensional mountain must satisfy, so that two climbers can start on the bottom on the opposite sides of the mountain and coordinate their movements to meet (possibly at the top) while always staying at the same height. 

A mountain chart is a financial chart or graph with peaks and dips, which makes it look like the side of a mountain.

A graph displaying an investment has an ebb and flow, much like the changing PPS power structure of our control over nature and natures control over us. 

Transatlantic emigration was one alternative to physical protest against agrarian capitalism

Nature-based forms of tourism in which the main motivation of the tourists is the observation and appreciation of nature as well as the traditional cultures prevailing in natural areas.

Emigration could turn the west highlands into a ‘great grass car park’.

Why is it called a carpark?

When automobiles started to overrun cities in the early twentieth century, parking areas were given over to car storage and the word began to refer to the cars themselves rather than the trees and grass they were replacing.

Throughout the 20th century denim was used for cheap durable uniforms like those issued to staff of the French national railways.

A way of storytelling, a way of piecing together the history of the area where much was lost. Storytelling and ancestral knowledge is usually shown through crafts. 

Fast fashion is a term used to describe the clothing industry's business model of replicating recent catwalk trends and high-fashion designs, mass-producing them at a low cost, and bringing them to retail stores quickly, while demand is at its highest.

The global fashion industry is responsible for ~8–10% of global carbon emissions per year, to which fast fashion is a large contributor.

the Industrial Revolution forever changed the world of fashion by introducing new technology like the sewing machine and textile machines

clan tartan, a symbol synonymous with kinship.

Fashion is updated frequently to meet peoples demand of aestheticism wearing the newest and latest clothing style and it is done in a mannerly fast process. One of the largest causes of the high demand for fashion is the short trend cycles. The more an audience is exposed to new trends, the higher the demand grows. 

The best ways to experience PPS, is to wander into the PPS

The 1980s punk scene included Jeans (sometimes dirty, torn or splattered with bleach) and tartan kilts or skirts.

“Punks ripped up tartan shirts and adapted kilts as an anti-Establishment message in the 1970s”

Vivienne Westwood featured torn-up Royal Stewart tartan in her designs, as a symbolic middle finger to British Society.

Cottar settlements were left in ruins and stones were then used for dykes, walls and enclosures that can still be seen today. 

CLEARANCE SALE

prices are lowered in order to sell things quickly and make room for new items.

Revolution in traditional patterns of human settlement.

Items will be priced even lower than traditional sales, as they tend to be items that no shopper is willing to buy, unless it is for a bargain. 

The price of an item on clearance will not go back up.

Much of the text is not the artist’s own but some of it is.

Emilie Bausager’s practice deals with the fluidity of history, and the impossibility of adequate representation. The narrative in-between reality and fiction is a main focus of her work. Much of the historical documentation of our landscapes history refers heavily on communal storytelling. By looking at old stories relating to our surroundings and combining them with contemporary information, Bausager creates summarised collages of specific settings that are relevant to her heritage in Britain and Denmark. 

By employing anachronism as a reoccurring artifice in her work she creates a tension between curiosity, insight, gravity and humour. Often rooted within landscape, constructed or not, Bausager’s output takes its shape as installation comprised of elements such as stained glass, textiles, objets trouvé, text, and prints.

Emilie Bausager (UK/DK, 1992) holds a MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2019). Recent exhibitions include: Den Frie (Copenhagen), SOL (Nexø), SKAL Contemporary (Skagen), OK Corral (Copenhagen), NADA (New York), Loggia (Munich), Kristen Lorello (New York), and Lagune Ouest (Copenhagen).