Journeying to new spaces

Mateo López, Nowhere Man,2011, Mixed media installation,
Overall display dimensions 190 x 320 x 281cm

Last month saw the opening of The Peripatetic School: Itinerant Drawing from Latin America. The exhibition, guest curated by Tate Modern curator of International Art Tanya Barson, presents the work of artists from across Latin America who share an engagement with the landscape, whether urban or rural. Works such as Nicolás Paris’ Hurry Slowly and those featured by Ishmael Randall Weeks, André Komatsu, and the collaborative works of Raimond Chaves and Gilda Mantilla, explore notions of discovery through travel and movement. Tony Cruz’s Distance Drawing San Juan/London, an attempt to draw the distance from San Juan to London (6,751.2362m). Realised only 0.0031890 percent (2,153m), and Mateo López’s Nowhere Man, engage with the relationship between the home and foreign lands, while Brígida Baltar creates beautiful and ephemeral works from the roots of her home country of Brazil, using soil as her drawing material.

The themes explored in The Peripatetic School are particularly apt for Drawing Room’s inaugural exhibition at its new Bermondsey location, as the gallery itself has been in the process of moving and establishing roots in this new cultural quarter of London. This week, Mateo López has been leading workshops with students from Southwark College, and the exhibition has received great feedback from local visitors. Furthermore, with White Cube soon to be opening just around the corner, Drawing Room’s new home is sure to be a hub of artistic activity. Check out our mention in The Art Newspaper and The Guardian this week.

In addition to organising workshops with a local college, Drawing Room held a well-attended conference in collaboration with TrAIN (University of the Arts Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation) last week. Guests including Moacir dos Anjos, Christian Rattemeyer, and Ellen Gallagher, spoke on the subject of Travelling Lines: Drawing as an Itinerant Practice. Lively discussions took place around themes and issues such as the link between itinerancy and drawing, the sense of place in Latin American art, and questions about what it means to be a ‘Latin American’ artist. In addition, the conference gave eight of the artists participating in the exhibition the chance to discuss and answer questions about their work. A healthy rapport and exchange between speakers and members of the audience further served to add to the success of the discussions, which will be available to listen to online shortly.

The Peripatetic School is open until 12 November 2011, Tuesday – Saturday 12-6pm.

TRACEY EMIN AT THE HAYWARD

The Hayward Gallery’s exhibition of the summer, ‘Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want,’ represents a vibrant display of the YBA’s oeuvre to date. The highly personal, and often-narcissistic work of Emin makes use of a vast array of differing mediums: from video to fabric works, and neons to outdoor sculptures. Drawing, however, is the medium that lies at the root of the artist’s practice, and this is reflected in the exhibition itself, with one wall label proclaiming that:
‘Tracey Emin refers to drawing as the backbone of her art. She became entranced with drawing when she first began to study art and it has remained her most enduring and consistent medium ever since.’
Indeed, many of Emin’s tapestries, light-works, and paintings that are displayed over the Hayward’s two floors, utilise flowing outlines that mimic the fluidity and spontaneity that one might associate with a quickly drawn sketch in graphite or ink. The neon work Blinding (2000), for example, almost looks as though the upside-down torso and legs of a female nude have been hastily drawn in light against a dark background; an image akin to the pictures that children trace in the air with sparklers at fireworks displays.
The top floor of the exhibition features a considerable number of monograph prints: a technique that Emin describes as ‘drawing in reverse.’ In one corner of the upper gallery these monographs are displayed in a cluster, the individual voices of each work jostling against each other to be heard. This curatorial decision highlights both the urgency and the overwhelming volume of Emin’s drawings. Furthermore, a large-scale animated drawing projected onto one wall emphasises the dynamism of Emin’s drawing, as the image of a female body is literally given movement as it flits randomly across the screen.
As an ambitious and comprehensive exhibition that showcases the importance of drawing in the practice of one of the biggest names in the UK’s contemporary art scene, a visit to the Hayward this summer is highly recommended for Tracey Emin’s lovers, fans, and critics alike.

Must see at The British Library

As part of 'Magnificent Maps' exhibition at The British Library Stephen Walter exhibits his drawing, 'The Island', 2008.

'The Island satirises the London-centric view of the English capital and its commuter towns as independent from the rest of the country. The artist, a Londoner with a love of his native city, offers up a huge range of local and personal information in words and symbols. Walter speaks in the dialect of today, focusing on what he deems interesting or mundane.'

http://www.bl.uk/magnificentmaps/map4.html

Film & Video event at South London Gallery

Tracing the Line

18 Aug 2010, 7pm,

Experimental film and video works exploring the relationship between film and drawing practice are brought together in a screening complementing the current exhibition Nothing is Forever. Ranging from early animation through to contemporary video made with computer manipulation, the featured works embrace a broad spectrum of techniques including drawing directly on celluloid and the use of chance as a creative process.

Includes works by George Barber, Sebastian Buerkner, Oskar Fischinger, David Haxton, Takahiko Iimura, Joan Jonas, Len Lye, Stan Vanderbeek and Lawrence Weiner.

http://www.southlondongallery.org/page/3049/Tracing+the+Line/229

Recommended by Margot Heller, Director South London Gallery, for Art Review's Top 5 must see for September

A moving plan B - chapter ONE
Selected by Thomas Scheibitz
16 September – 31 October 2010

http://www.drawingroom.org.uk/thomasscheibitz.htm

Drawn animation screening, 17 July 2010

The Drawing Room Screening:

Following on from our recent exhibition Shudder, UPProjects invited The Drawing Room to present a selection of artists animations. As well as screening works by artists Edwina Ashton co-commissioned by Animate Projects and The Drawing Room, Markus Vater and Raymond Pettibon we will feature Shudder, an animation produced in collaboration with Postgraduate Diploma Character Animation (Pg Dip CA), Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London.

17th July 4–10pm. Gillett Square, London N16 8JN
FREE
www.portavilion.com

For one day only in Gillett Square, the portavilion bubble will be transformed into a temporary cinema presenting films from Hackney Archives and Dalston’s Rio cinema; artists’ animations brought to the programme by The Drawing Room and the animation Shudder made in collaboration with Pg Dip Character Animation, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London; a film about the first British feminist and Hackney resident Mary Wollstonecraft by Hackney based Fragments & Monuments fi lm and performance company, and a dance-fi lm exploring Dalston’s public spaces, made by local residents and East London Dance. Local residents are encouraged to bring in footage or images of Hackney and Dalston and its rapid change which may be later displayed in the Hackney Museum.

During the evening, the Portavilion bubble will come alive with projections on its surface and films will be screened along with music.

Fra Angelica to Leonardo Italian Renaissance Drawings at the British Museum

An impressive selection which includes some real gems including Antonio Pisanello’s ‘Three Men’ of c. 1433, a work intended as a presentation drawing and his drawings of ‘Hanged Men’ of 1434-8 which show corpses in varying states of decay; Andrea Mantegna’s ‘Man on a Stone Slab’ of c. 1475-85; the ‘Head of a woman’ by Andrea del Verrocchio (who was Leonardo’s teacher); and some fantastic Leonardo drawings. The exhibition finishes with Titian’s ‘Young Woman’ drawing of 1510-5.

www.britishmuseum.org