Some thoughts on drawing from Antony Gormley

To mark the opening of Antony Gormley's Space Stations exhibition at The Hatton Gallery, Antony Gormley gave a wonderful talk about drawing. His unscripted rambling about drawing was eloquent and thoughtful, and made for an insightful introduction to the exhibition.

"Space Stations is an exhibition of works on paper by Antony Gormley in which the artist seeks to reconcile the body with its habitat and architecture with anatomy, making drawings wherein the body is treated as a space within space."


Here are a few statements, questions and thoughts raised in the lecture

Drawing is the way we inhabit an imagined world

There is no hiding in drawing

Drawing is tuning in 

Drawing doesn't have to be about appearance

To draw up a plan...

To draw from...

Drawing is reflective

Drawing is a circuit

What is a drawing of? A thing? A place?

A trajectory of thoughts

A diagram of a state of mind

Reversing substance and appearance

Reversing space and body

Allowing the behaviour of materials

The surface of a piece of paper can become a landscape

Describing energy

Stop drawing when it gets too comfortable or too knowing

Drawing is a place of freedom

Drawing is a celebration of what is possible

Drawing enables an empathetic exchange with a viewer in a generous manner

"Gormley's Space Stations exhibition runs in parallel with Speculations: making thinking drawing, an exhibition in celebration of drawing. Speculations: making thinking drawing brings together archival material with the work of contemporary artists in order to explore the ingenious and imaginative ways in which ideas, materials, space and structure can be evoked and investigated on the flat plane of the paper’s surface. 

Speculations: making thinking drawing forms part of the inaugural exhibitions of ‘drawing?’ - a series of exhibitions, discussions, publications, lectures and events based around the theme of drawing, which will take place in various museums and galleries in the North East over the forthcoming year."

http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/hatton-gallery/whats-on/exhibitions

A furry friend

The latest addition to the group of standing sculptures is made from pipe cleaners, and has bamboo canes for legs.

Part of me thinks this is a step too far, and is in danger of being a gimmick.

I like that the legs seem unstable as it adds some tension and the way that the legs are not completely straight gives the sculpture character.

Different methods of display

I've been experimenting with different ways that I could install the same piece of work.

On the wall

 On the floor

 Emerging from a mound of shredded paper

From another world?

Collage

Collage

• a technique of composing a work of art by pasting on a single surface various materials not normally associated with one another, such as newspaper clippings, parts of photographs, theater tickets, and fragments of an envelope.
• an assemblage or occurrence of diverse elements or fragments in unlikely or unexpected juxtaposition

Screenprinting, mark-making experiments

Over the past few days I have enjoyed spending time in the printmaking workshop doing some screen printing.

The images that I exposed to the screens included a number of scanned mark making experiments that I did with silicone on different surfaces, a pencil drawing, and a few ink drawings of the little sculptures that I have been making.

So far I have concentrated on printing the mark making experiments, and have been testing printing on different materials and using different combinations of colours.

With the image above, I printed onto tissue paper and the delicate tissue paper stuck to the screen as the vacuum on the print bed was not working. When I peeled it off, the crumpled mark left on the screen was interesting, and so when printing the next image I did not flood the screen, but allowed the squeegee to pull through the remains of the ink left from the previous image, leaving the pattern of the crumpled tissue paper. 

Some new additions to the family

Layers of paint

Thanks to Elliot for sharing this image with me. It's layers of paint that broke off wooden spoons used for mixing.

http://imgur.com/icG8HnS

Colour match

Cleaning up after a session of casting, I noticed a near spot-on colour match between the colour of the water in which I had been rinsing my equipment and the pair of protective gloves draped over the sink! 

Millipede

Bambi legs

Stilts

Welcome to my new home - studio 5.12

Now that the Newcastle University Undergraduate Degree Show has finished and the undergraduate students have finished for the session (I'll miss them), the Masters students are reallocated into the now vacant studios. We had to complete proposals stating our top 3 choices of studio, and we have now been notified which spaces we have. These are the spaces in which we will be exhibiting in for our Summer Exhibition, and we are now able to move in to the studios and use prior to the exhibition.

My new space is studio 5.12. Here it is:

It is a lovely light room, with great windows that look out onto the Northern Stage and the Student Union. I look forward to spending the next couple of months in here!

Party hats

Interaction of colour - Colour is relative

I've spent a good few hours looking at, reading and admiring the contents of a slip-cased limited edition, of 'Interaction of colour' by Josef Albers, complete with the full range of screen printed plates to accompany his text. Albers writings demonstrate principles such as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusion of transparency and reversed grounds.

Colour relatively 

A colour can appear to change depending upon the other colours around it.

The following examples illustrate how the same colour can be made to look different.

Lino cutting workshop

Today I took part in a lino cutting workshop organised and led by Erika Servin as part of the VAMOS Festival.



I begun by drawing what I imagined as multilayered platforms of varied height onto the lino. I was then told by the Mexicans that Mexico is famous for its hallucinogenic mushrooms, and my drawing reminded them of such mushrooms. This was completely unintentional.

The areas where there is a black line were not cut into, leaving this part raised and therefore ready to take the ink.



We looked at how to create different tones using different marks.



Eduardo showed me how to create an unusual mottled effect by ironing the surface of the lino. Unfortunately, the lino that we were using was too thick for the iron to melt the surface, but he did have a little sample of thinner lino to demonstrate on, so I got to see how the melting surface produced the unusual imagery.





From the lino above, I produced the print below.



I can't say that I am fond of what I made, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process and was really impressed with what the others produced.

Eduardo, one of the Mexican's leading the workshop kindly gave me one of his lino cuts. Now thats an example of how to do a lino cut!