Tom van der Klugt

About

Tom is an artist and designer specialising in applying the results of an experimental studio philosophy to contemporary communications practice. Tom began working life as a lawyer, qualifying as a solicitor and a barrister. Specialising in environmental and planning law, they subsequently spent a number of years working within the urban planning sector, before going on to study on the Graduate Diploma programme at the Royal College of Art.

Now working in the studio with a broad range of analogue media, including charcoal, chalk, ink, pastel and paint, as well as digitally, much of their work springs from combining meticulous attention to material and process with an openness to the gestural and a responsiveness to accident. A critical influence has been the playful automatism of the Surrealists, an affinity which has fed a recurring fascination with how the results of smallscale experiments can evoke expansive atmospheres and narratives. A recent series of three miniature interactive ‘amusements’, Rootmap, Cyclorama and Scenograph, allows viewers to manipulate ink, crushed charcoal and soot in order to ‘automatically’ generate a series of ethereal vignettes, recalling dramatic landscapes, seascapes or meteorological events, while possessing a sublime or even contemplative quality.

Much of Tom’s work exists in a space of translation between forms and phenomena, from the precisely logocentric, to the highly abstract and the multi-sensory. Another recent project, Model, deconstructs the notion of models and model-making in the context of experimental communications practice, drawing more widely on the work of twentieth century fine artists such as Agnes Martin and Bridget Riley, and contemporary influences such as Liam Gillick.

Tom grew up in Sussex and currently lives and works in London.