Outset Study

 

Drawing Room has just opened a new study area. It operates on a drop in basis. Visitors to exhibitions will be able to read books/materials related to the exhibition. Those doing more specialist research can get help from the librarian in the latter part of the week and can email with queries prior to visiting.

click here  drawingroom.org.uk/study
                                  to browse titles 
                     

Marking Language

Marking Language  Drawing Room London

10 Oct - 14 Dec 2013

www.drawingroom.org.uk

sunset on the Rich Estate where Drawing Room is

'Marking Language' at Drawing Room London is an exhibition that is running parallel to 'Drawing Time Reading Time' at Drawing Center New York.

At Drawing Center the focus is when language began to be used in art in the 1960s. This is a useful reference point for the exhibition here in London where seven artists from around the world use language in an innovative non-linear manner.

Pavel Buchler subverts linguistic communication to challenge stereotypes.

Johanna Calle transcribes phonetic tribal languages using an adaptive typewriter and ledger paper to reflect the powerlessness and bureaucracy that impacts tribal people.

Annabel Daou looks at the power of utterance and how phonetic transliteration affects communication and explores drawing as performance.

Matias Faldbakken references Reinhardt to make work which is more about ideas than materials. Words have ambiguity and he moves towards the illegible and irrational.

Karl Holmqvist sets language free by creating concrete poems in book form, wall drawings and sculpture.

Bernardo Ortiz uses the act of drawing to transcribe poems into works that resemble musical scores with repeated motifs and themes.

Shahzia Sikander explores the act of translation creating a work with many layers of language.

The works created for this exhibition show language in a non-linear form, striped of its authority and power. We see the beauty of a line of words, a block of text and a single letterform.

I liked the graphic impact of the work by Karl Holmqvist because of its scale and starkness: the black letterforms were drawn directly onto the wall using magic marker. The content of these concrete poems comes from a variety of sources because he believes that language is acquired and not our own. We quote and requote all the time and so Holmqvist adopts this technique to source his material. His poems employ a play on language to make social comments.

 Karl Holmqvist Untitled (Lettriste Sculpture) 2013

  Karl Holmqvist Untitled (Wall Drawing) 2013  (part of)

  Karl Holmqvist Untitled (Lettriste  Sculpture) 2013 with book of concrete poetry in the foreground and part of Untitled (Wall Drawing) 2013 in the background

In Conversation with Ciara Phillips

 

A space to experiment for a few weeks. That is what Drawing Room has become for nominated artist Ciara Phillips. I was keen to get a glimpse of her work in progress and learn how she approaches such an opportunity.

She began by reading and making lots of notes on large sheets of paper which she stuck to the wall.

 

 She also put up some proofs of previous work. She said that she works in a context specific way by responding to situations.

 She's doing a lot of screenprinting. That is her background. Drawing is immediate, print creates distance and in the process something happens.

Here at Drawing Room she has very limited materials and has had to improvise. She is working in a very open intuitive way allowing things to happen that she doesn't understand. Its a sort of abstraction, an experience in and of itself, a way into the process. Abstraction is the opposite of information.

 

Why are so many artists now interested in printmaking? Is it a need for structure? Or the need to be physically making instead of conceptualizing? But art is the product of a critical process of thinking. Or is screenprinting  a manifestation of nostalgia like desaturated colour?

To begin and continue not knowing the outcome.... to let the work lead....

I am interested in Phillips' use of text and how words can be visually powerful.

drawingroom.org.uk