Victoria & Albert Museum – Acquisition of Works
February 2024
The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, has acquired works from Edmund Clark’s series ‘Control Order House’ and ‘Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition’ for their permanent collection.
Flowers Gallery is delighted to announce the V&A’s acquisition of works from two of Edmund Clark’s groundbreaking projects. Control Order House examines the lives of individuals subjected to control orders as part of the UK government’s response to terrorism. This work delves into the impact of security measures, introduced under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, including the power to relocate ‘controlled persons’ to a house anywhere in the country, to impose a curfew, and to restrict communication electronically and in person. ‘Controlled persons’ were not prosecuted for terrorist-related activity, and the evidence against them remained secret. Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition, created in collaboration with investigator Crofton Black, confronts the nature of invisible mechanisms of state control. From George W. Bush’s 2001 declaration of the ‘war on terror,’ until 2008, an unknown number of people disappeared into a network of secret prisons organised by the US Central Intelligence Agency – transfers without legal process, otherwise known as extraordinary rendition.