MA Joint Peer Group ExperiencesStudent Staff Showcase Unit 2 October 9th 2014 One timed minute to articulate your current practice using one drawing. To be presented to and by all MA students and tutors.
Last year was random ordered presentation, this time alphabetical by first name which necessitated me mainly reading my notes as I felt flustered. My statement Trace, Objects and mark making, first year explored fine lines ‘By the manipulation of recognized feminine and domestic objects, she offers a new appraisal of the familiar. ‘ Image is a summary of my present position, precarious, curios. My curiosity about exploring materials and media means I tend to take threads from all over the place and attempt to crystallise them into something simple and direct. Delicacy of the majority of my pieces creates a constant interrogation of how to display and preserve them. Mira Schendel retrospective at Tate Modern had a great impact. Her work is delicate, pensive and quirky. Her work has rigour yet is simple, is fragile but energetic. But other ambitions for this work reflect Cornelia Parker, speaking of blending wit and poignancy in her work The whimsical ideas of Mathew Sawyer (His ‘documentary works’ where he chronicles nominal actions through text and photography,) he navigates between tragicomic and poetic, intimate and universal, conceptualand emotional. The Olympics Drawn 09th Oct 2014 15:00 to 16:30 Seminar
The event will bring together academics and curators, designers and contributors to the exhibition, to discuss the role of drawing in the design process and the realisation of the Olympic and Paralympic games. Chaired by Angela Brew, the panel will include: Kevin Owens, former Design Principal for LOCOG; Joanne O’Hara, postdoctoral researcher and curator of the exhibition; Stephen Farthing, Rootstein Hopkins Professor of Drawing; and artist Tania Kovats.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/100897133[/vimeo]
Kevin Owens Architect discussed how all the original concepts were hand drawn, how drawing was the thinking then communication process. Joanna O’Hara curator of ‘The Olympics Drawn’ discussed how this devaluing of the preparatory drawings made prior to curatorial and archival intervention, meant no attempt was made to save them but they show creativity, ‘frozen in time’ That drawings in the exhibition were borrowed from individuals who were also able to contribute their oral histories. Tanya Kovats ‘Oceans’ at Hestercombe and Liquid Line Drawing as a mechanism for exploration Seminar. 6th November 2014 ‘Kovats uses the natural world both as her subject and her material. She approaches the natural environment both in terms of identifiable places – sites that can be mapped, named, inhabited and scrutinised – and as matter with properties that can be subjected to external forces and potential transformations.’ I was extremely fortunate to arrive early and join the curator, Tim and Kate on an artist tour of ‘Oceans’ with Tania. I had missed the original showing of ‘Oceans’ at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh last year, the photographs showed a typical white cube space. This would be an interesting curatorial challenge to locate the works with in the divided spaces of an historical house rebranded as a gallery space. Installation views :
New site specific work for Hestercombe, on the grand staircase.
‘All the Sea (2012–14), a collection of a work made from sea water collected from around the world by individuals who responded to a public invitation to help assemble the world’s sea water in one place’. ‘All the Seas’ looked dignified in the space,with wonderful shadows. The fireplace mantle wall as the carrier of all the seas names was unobtrusive, yet it felt as if it had always been there and would be a part of the rooms future.
I would love Reef 1 and Reef 2 to have absorbed the whole floor of the gallery, like Anthony Gormley’s ‘Field’, a colony ready to sneakily escape and fill the whole house. The pieces were adult male size, almost bodies laid out on the floor but seemed dwarfed and diminished by the rooms dimensions and height.
‘Only Blue’ I loved the obsolete atlases, the erasing of all land mass and populace. Tania was telling us about people interacting with the work and turning the pages. I find that a real endorsement by the viewing public, that their curiosity is so aroused they interact with the work.
Beautiful, a hovering perfect replication of object and shadow. ‘Schist’ I was intrigued by these wax tectonic plate drawings using a machine from 1900.
Seminar: Liquid Line Drawing as a mechanism for exploration with Tania Kovats, Kate Macfarlane and Tim Knowles Tania spoke with her usual humour and understated manner about her practice, published books and the role drawing plays in her work. Kate Macfarlane whisked us through a history of the Drawing Room, it’s associations with The Drawing Centre in New York and the current position of International drawing. A brief presentations of exhibitions and artists associated with the Drawing Room, revealed copious artists to research. Monika Grzymala using tape as a found line. Anna Barriball, exploiting drawing materials to make sculpture.Emma McNally working with graphite explosions. Susan Hefuna, plotting on layers of tracing paper. Franz Erhard Walther, 527 drawings, a graphic novel looking back over his lives work. Alexandra Mir. She introduced us to South American artists using plant extracts to draw plants. The final segment was a presentation on the artists and work in ‘The Nakeds’. Tim Knoles, reviewed his exploration of the range and use of drawing in his entire practice, in a warm, natural and fun way. Having had the privilidge of spending a day at his studio with last years MA group there was a familiarity with his actions and chance methods of creating work. I still made two A4 pages of notes! One of the final questions at the end of the seminar regarded if the artists felt humour was evident in their work. Tania reflected that there was a negotiation in her work between sadness and depression rather than humour. Things are comical but not humerous. Tim described the delicate balance between whimsical and kitsch. Maybe his work is humorous but he doesn’t want to turn it into farce.Kate felt both their work exemplified curiousity and allied Tim’s work to Leonardo Di Vinci’s drawings of mad head gear. Tania felt both artists were celebratory and Tim concluded that a playful approach to drawing was really valuable but never mischief.
My Peer Group workshop: 13th November 2014 ‘Television Drawings: Watching the detectives, dancers and deceivers, how emotion and movement affects the drawing experience, are these ‘good’ drawings?’. Find in Critical practice section.
Drawing Lab. ‘TONE’ Tania Kovats 8th January 2015 It is the elements of drawing that are regarded as obvious that sometimes when revisited, turn out to be complex and difficult to achieve in a prescribed manner. ‘Tone’ in a drawing is where we turn dust into light and dark with a range of middle tones in between. Tone follows where light and dark goes, and occupies the world of highlights and shadow. This will be a dry and dusty approach to tone. Exercise One: Tonal range. Using a pencil on white paper, mark out a 20cm x 3cm strip.
Repeat the exercise on mid tone paper. Drawing exercise 1 Try to describe a balloon using only your tonal range of marks on your spectrum in charcoal and pastel working on the mid tone paper. Toned Paper is useful for understanding how to control tone on a paper that can receive a lighter and darker mark.
3. Dark to Light
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