Annually Birmingham School of Art hosts an exhibition of school students art from 17 Schools across South of the City. It always a sunny HOT launch evening attended by many students, teachers and parents to see the high quality work being made by diverse secondary school talent. The 2018 show excelled and the breadth of work captured the many faces of the city’s young people. Some slides from the launch:
IMG_2237
IMG_2190
IMG_2136
IMG_2145
IMG_2185
IMG_2123
IMG_2188
IMG_2148
IMG_2192
IMG_2243
IMG_2196
IMG_2169
IMG_2161
IMG_2242
IMG_2130
IMG_2245
IMG_2217
IMG_2249
IMG_E2226
IMG_E2219
IMG_2220
IMG_2149
IMG_2244
IMG_2175
IMG_2238
IMG_2206
IMG_2116
IMG_2199
IMG_2176
IMG_2156
IMG_2140
IMG_E2240
IMG_2251
IMG_2120
IMG_2252
South Network @Schol of Art
IMG_2157
Every school included a portrait, painting, drawing, photograph or sculpture of classmates, family members or respected people of many and varied cultures. From Swanshurst school’s 4 meter long series of portraits in charcoal to Bishop Challoner’s 2 meter high painted portrait’s on board images of young people proudly stared out. Traditional art skills abound alongside contemporary applications of colour and concepts to make the studio exhibition space burst with the enthusiasm, emotions and the vibrancy of the makers and their subjects.
Video of Swanshurst ‘WALL’
Go see for the next few days in the sun. All these talented artists will have the opportunity to extend themselves with the new Foundation course at The School of Art beginning in September.
Members of The Printmakers Council were privileged to be offered the opportunity of a guided tour of examples of the Victoria and Albert Museum print collection in V&A Study Room lead by Head of Prints Gill Saunders and on this occasion ably supported by her curating colleague Tim Travis.
This 2018 visit is in response to the success of past V&A visits, and a unique opportunity to view prints selected from their archives. The print selection follows the recent PMC exhibition ‘Print City’, held at the Morley Gallery with selected prints related to cities and the urban environment.
The V&A collection of works on paper number over 1 million pieces of which about 500,000 are prints and the remainder drawings, watercolours and photographs. The V&A has been collecting contemporary prints for many years since its inception.
There is a slide show of our visit below. PMC Member Denise Wylie also captured the visit and has published on her facebook page .
V&A print room visitor book
the arrival - David Hockney - sign of what's to come on the visit
new exhibition road entrace
ready to go
getting in
gill saunders head of prints introduction
first print is london's kerning
londons kerning
no lines only letters
chris ofili
concentration
inspection
smart phone capture
russian manhole cover stamps
tim travis describes prints from Russian revolutionary artists
canary construct
digital print-Tom Noonan
detail
bag for life in support of the homeless
plastic bag for life
drawing and print
whistler prints
note taking
Hockney's rakes progress
the wallet begins to empty
the drinking scene
meeting the good people
Gill Sounders Head of print
urban prints
drawings and lithographs
Gill points out catalogue number
work on moscow metro
Tim Travis Curator
Robert Gibbings Lino cut
London Bridge today robert gibbings
wood cut southwark Bridge Robert Gibbings
W Richardson
Leonard Potter colour Lino cut prints
Leonard Potter
Leonard Potter
Denise documenting the visit
Nevinson, Christopher R
Nevinson
Nevinson
Nevinson
Nevinson, Christopher Richard Wynne
woolworth building original drawing Joseph Pennel
Nevinson, Christopher R
print
Shenadoah
Martin Lewis mezzotint with glow
unworked plate to achieve light glow
detailed viewing
Tim Travis
Tim describes Notting hill series
notting hill housing trust prints
the series
nottinghill
notting hill street
Justin De Villneurve
Gill explains background
denise with phone portrait
meanwhile the cataloging continues
green label cataloging
Denise
impressive
title detail
corner detail
wrecking ball
Guy checks the hogarth book
Gin Lane engraving
detail
detail
permanently high
viewing last prints
Q & A
drawing
drawing
from mezzotint
mezzotint
IMG_3799
free viewing time
sharing a special Piranesi find
final touches
later as we leave
Catherine_bray_with_board 10x8
Strand & Whipman Manhattan Ashmoleum 10x8
Tall American Tate Britain All2Human10x8
Edin modern art_Michael_armitage10x8
Julia Stewart ikon Bock 10x8
Edin modern art kilted 10x8
Hayward_Hearing Gursky 10x8
Victorian_Giants NPG10x8
Ai Weiwei RA thinking waiting10x8
Rauschenberg Tate10x8
Gill began with typographical map of the city: London’s Kerning, which is a detailed street map with no delineating lines but each street is defined by its lettering. It was commissioned from NB: Studio (designer) by the International Society of Typographers in 2006
no lines only letters. London kerning
She then went on to highlight two prints by Chris Ofili made in Barcelona following his painting graduation show from the Royal college of Art where he met V&A curator Rosie Miles, who asked if he had made any prints. He had not, however Rosie said that if he ever did let the Museum know.
Following graduation he saw some ancient rock drawings in Zimbawe made by artists in a trance like state. He visited Barcelona and took himself into a similar trance and began drawing city landmarks on etching plates and produced 10 prints as a spiritual response to the city. These are two of them. Gill mentioned that attending degree shows was an opportunity to purchase works before they become too expensive!
Tim Travis took over to tell us about contemporary digital prints, including a monoprint by Russian artist Gluklya showing a monument to unknown workers, and a large-scale digital print by Tom Noonan.
russian manhole cover stamps
He also introduced a unique Russian print featuring manhole covers included in a series of stamps titled ‘the best Sewerage for the best people’. Each stamp has a subtitle dedication from the artists across the world that inspired the artist Alexander Kholopov while unable to travel out of Moscow. Images were shared across 70 countries via mail. An early example of mail art and a precursor to art and social media.
Gill showed us 4 of David Hockney’s series of 16 Rake’s Progress etchings, made while studying at the RCA when it was next door to the V&A. Guy Butters commented that Hockney prepared and printed his own plates and word has it that one of the reasons he took to print was that paper and materials were free at the time, unlike the expense of canvas and paints. Gill suggested his prints may be even better than his paintings!
A surprising print was made on a plastic bag, part of a project to draw attention to the issue of homelessness in the city: Franko’s B’s A Bag for Life. Perhaps printed on throw away material, to chime with attitude much of society has to its homeless members.
We saw prints by WW1 war artist Joseph Pennell and prints of apocalyptic biblical scenes by 19th century painter John Martin. Tim told us of the range of representation of the City by artists throughout the 19th century. Sometimes romantic, others reflecting anxiety about the spread of industrialisation and expanding metropolis, while other created images of cities of the imagination. In the 1980s Brodsky & Utkin were artists at the Moscow architecture institute. They worked so closely together they were awarded one diploma in their joint name. Moscow was supposed to be the ideal city and Stalin’s contribution/ legacy was the metro, whereas Khrushchev’s project was new housing which were all built on old historic sites. Tim commented that ‘houses die twice’. 1. When people leave them 2. when demolished. At the time Russian printmakers had to print when they could as materials were not freely available. Etching paper was not always available and multiple copper plates were made and printed later when paper became available.
Gill took us through prints by Whistler of the Thames. A wonderful Hogarth book of engravings showed urban settings including Beer Street and Gin Lane illustrating the effects of alcohol on less wealthy city dwellers. Also on show were Victorian views of upmarket society entertainment at Vauxhall Gardens and Robert Gibbings’ wood cuts of London bridges, as well as colour lino-cuts of city transport, workers and life in the 20’s and 30’s by artists of the Grosvenor School.
One from this group of prints was by the artist Leonard Potter. He was a late-comer to print having worked in stained glass, but in the 1930’s turned to colour lino-cut. Gill remembers receiving a call from reception one afternoon a few years back: “Mr David Potter to see you”. Not knowing a David Potter, she nevertheless less went to meet the unknown visitor and met an elderly gentleman holding a battered carrier bag. Mr Potter said “you might want these” and brought out 3 colour prints of “my father Leonard’s work. We thought you might like to have them.” A truly generous and truly wonderful gift.
Following on from lino cuts we were shown a stunning collection of Christopher Nevinson’s City scenes including a 1918 Futurist influenced semi-abstract mezzotint with rich, inky black velvet shadows.
Ash Can School artist Martin Lewis’s 1939 drypoint and sandpaper aquatint Shadow Magic featured a dark urban scene with a bright glowing light bulb achieved by leaving one small area of the plate unworked.
Tim brought us up to date with a series of colour screen prints by 12 artists working with an Royal College of Art partnership to support the Notting Hill Housing Trust refurbishment in 2003 including a print of (local resident?) Justin de Villeneuve.
Gill concluded the expert and insightful tour by showing a collection of abstract prints responding to the city experience.
As we reached the end of our tour of four extended tables of multi genre printmaking Gill and Tim took questions about the prints we had seen and the city concept that had inspired their selections. We were encouraged to spend more time up close with any of the prints with a generous period of free time in the room which members enthusiastically took up.
Gill also pointed out the print by Liz Collini specially commissioned for the Print Room with its text: “Among the indescribable sounds of paper, moving.”
Do look at PMC Member Denise Wylie’s excellent review of the visit on her facebook page .
The Print Room is a study room where original prints can be viewed, after looking at the online catalogue and booking in advance. Gill and Tim encouraged PMC Members to make appointments and visit to see the most wonderful and wide ranging collection of extraordinary printmaking.
Today in Birmingham’s ikon gallery saw the long in the curating first exhibition outside Australia dedicated to the work of Thomas Bock (c 1793 – 1855). As ikon director Jonathan Watkins and Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery director, Janet Carding say in their forward to the beautifully and insightfully illustrated catalogue ; ‘It comprises a selection of drawings, paintings and photographs that demonstrate not only the artist’s technical skill, but also sensitivity to a wide range of subject matter including portraits of Tasmanian Aborigines, his fellow criminals as well as free settlers in Hobart Town, nudes, landscapes and every day scenes, occasionally giving touching inside into his domestic life.
Bock was one of the most important artists working in Australia during the colonial years. Born in Birmingham, trained there as an engraver and miniature painter, in 1823 he was found guilty of ’administering concoctions for certain herbs …… with the intent to cause miscarriage’ and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years. He arrived in Hobart the following year where quickly he was pressed into service is a convict artist, engraving banknotes, illustrations for a local almanac and commercial stationery. An early commission was a number of portraits of captured bushrangers, before and after execution by hanging, including the notorious cannibal Alexander Pearce.
Alexander Pearce, serial murderer, executed and recorded by drawing
In a short space of time, Bock’s life was turned upside down. Once a respectable artisan in his early 20s, with a good address in a booming industrial town, he now found himself at the edge of the known world in the company of compatriots who were as desperate as they were depraved. There are no surviving diaries that document his personal journey, but Bock’s artistic output on arrival, through conditional absolute pardon and until his death – marked by an obituary but described him as artist of a very high order – is a rich seam of observation that was at once subtle and astonishing.
Most significant in this respect is a box series of portraits of Tasmanian Aborigines, commissioned by George Augustus Robinson during 1831-35, now in the British Museum. It is a master set, from which a number of copies were made. The drawing throughout is very fine and the likenesses probably very true, and having them at the heart of this exhibition will effectively convey the tragedies suffered by Indigenous people through the British colonisation of Australia. The sitters – including Trukanini (c1812-76) have a demeanour that conveys both pride and despair. For British audiences on the whole this work will be a revelation; for Aboriginal visitors to the exhibition in Hobart – who know the sad narrative only too well – it will be a rare and poignant opportunity to see firsthand such early pictures of their ancestors.
The exhibition and history reflects a literally amazing story of a Birmingham born trained artist and convicted criminal who sketched his passage from Woolwich in July 1823 to Tasmania in January 1824. The sketches begin with a family, and a view of the city, both probably his own. They follow the English, Cape Verde and South Africa coastlines as he reaches Hobart and is immediately put to work for the Bank of Van Dieman’s Land engraving notes.
The exhibition and the walking talk by Jane Stewart of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Tasmanian Artist, writer and historian Julie Gough took us through the works on the wall. Jane explained the depth of history, skills and talents of Thomas Bock and concluded at a glazed box holding the portrait of a young Tasmanian woman ‘taken in’, from Flinders Island of incarceration, by a British serving family in Hobart to be ‘civilised’. The Franklins commissioned Bock to paint a portrait of Mithina (Mathinna) in the red dress. There is much history to this image which Jane and Julia shared with us, including the fact that the original painting was framed by an oval mount which removed Mathinna’s feet from view. On purpose we do not not know, but the portrait is now exhibited in a frame showing her whole body.
Director Watkins also introduced another glazed case by lifting the leather cover to reveal 3 daguerreotypes taken by Bock only three years after the process was invented in France. It is claimed that Thomas Bock was the first person to introduce the technique to Tasmania. He passed on his photographic business to his step son Alfred who in turn introduced the Carte de Visite to Hobart. The exhibition does not include an image of Thomas Bock, and one is extremely hard to locate, perhaps. because of Bock’s very real criminal history in Britain. However the Australian Dictionary of Biographyholds a photograph by Alfred, along with his Biography which I include here as I ‘missed’ seeing him alongside the images he created.
Finally Julia walked us round the gallery to furnish us with the historical context to Bock’s artworks. She was aided by, appropriately enough, a miniature projector with her slide show being projected on the wall spaces between the frames. Director Watkins showed a steady and stable hand to keep the beam straight and true. Much like the exhibition as a whole that delivers revelations about a little known, until now, Birmingham, British artist and his role in reflecting the Indigenous peoples of Tasamania.
slide show from the Thomas Bock Exhibition
Slide Show
The exhibition is on until March next year and there are a range of talks this week culminating in a symposium on Friday 15th:
This one-day symposium is a collaboration between King’s College London and Ikon.
Bock was one of the most important artists working in Australia during the colonial years. He trained as an engraver and miniature painter in Birmingham before, in 1823, being found guilty of “administering concoctions of certain herbs … with the intent to cause miscarriage”, for which his sentence was transportation for fourteen years. Bock arrived in Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania, Australia) the following year, where he was quickly pressed into service as a convict artist, engraving bank notes, illustrations for a local almanac, cheques, commercial stationery and so on. An early commission was a number of portraits of captured bushrangers, before and after execution by hanging, including the notorious cannibal Alexander Pearce. Bock’s portraits of Aboriginal Tasmanians are some of the most important in Australian art, including that featured here of Mathinna, daughter of Towterer and his wife Wongerneep of the Lowreenne people.
Experts will contextualise Bock’s life and work, while engaging in debates about ‘art in a time of colony’, the representation of Australia’s Indigenous peoples, and the politics and experience of transportation from the Midlands to colonial Australia.
Programme
10:00-10:30 Registration, Anatomy Museum, Level 6, King’s Building
10:30-1045 Welcome by Dr Ian Henderson, Director MCAS
10:45-12:30 Industrial Birmingham to Colonial Van Diemen’s Land
Dr Malcolm Dick, University of Birmingham
Thomas Bock’s Birmingham: Industry and Culture in “the city of a thousand trades”
Professor Judith A. Allen, Indiana University Bloomington
Thomas Bock’s conviction: Men, and the rise and fall of the new capital crime of abortion, 1803-37
Dr David Meredith, University of Oxford
On the transportation system and Van Diemen’s Land
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13:30-15:00 Convicts, Art, and Knowledge
Professor Clare Anderson, University of Leicester
Convicts and Penal Colonies in 19th-Century Science and Collecting: A Global Perspective
Professor Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, University of Birmingham
Thomas Bock and Edmund Clark: Savagery and Redemption in Ikon’s criminal portraiture, colonial and contemporary
Dr Ian Henderson, Menzies Centre King’s College London
Green Arcades Project: Art and Sociability in Nineteenth-Century Hobart Town
15:00-15:30 Afternoon Tea
15:30-17:00 Bock and the Tasmanians
Jane Stewart, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
On Bock and the history of art in Tasmania
Dr Gaye Sculthorpe, British Museum
Thomas Bock and the mystery of Trukanini’s necklace
Dr Julie Gough, Artist
The race of representation: What the works by Bock and his colonial contemporaries offer on the circumstances of Tasmanian Aboriginal people
17:30-19:30 Reception for Ikon’s Thomas Bock Exhibition
18:00 Jonathan Watkins, Director, Ikon Gallery on the exhibition
Image: Thomas Thomas Bock Mithina (Mathinna) (1842) Watercolour Presented by J H Clark 1951, AG290
The Printmakers Council was formed in 1965 a group of artists including Julian Trevelyan, Michael Rothenstein, Anthony Gross, Stanley Jones and Agatha Sorel who saw the need for a society that would promote new developments within printmaking. Since then it has consistently promoted the place of printmaking in the visual arts. More about the history of the Printmakers Council here
In 2017 the Council invited artist printmakers to submit works for the Print City and Mini Print exhibitions which opened on November at the Morley Gallery in Lambeth London. The exhibits showed the breadth of UK printmaking including silkscreen, etching, linocut, lithography, solar and plastic engraving. I submitted a mini print (19×19) of an inkjet print on pastel paper – Welsh Bowl with Mermaids Purse, Sheep’s Wool and Rabbits Tail. The Mini Prints are a portfolio that will be held by the V&A Print Collection. I met Michael Pritchard from Staffordshire who had his digital prints in the city exhibition that sat alongside plastic engravings by Louise Hayward and Guy Butters Underground Surveillance that hung in on of the windows which are included in the slide how of iPhone pictures from the opening night.
Scottish visitor
City Print full house
close inspection
Welsh Bowl Inkjet print- ejt
mini prints
IMG_5553.jpeg
4 mini prints
plastic engravings
kipling estate LH
louise hayward underground.jpeg
michael pritchard digital.jpeg
Committee Convo
Rebuilding the Built
IMG_5585.jpeg
underground surveillance Guy Butters
Morley Gallery
Imperial war museum gate house
Imperial War Museum Frontage
The gallery is nearby The Imperial War Museum which was particularly dramatic that night with a bright moon low in the sky.
I dropped by the IPS ( International Production Space in Birmingham School of Art) that flowed from pieces from Bahrain Artists presented by the Bahrain based Ulafaa Initiative in the foyer. It is a rewarding show with insights into how young artists are making their voices seen and heard locally and internationally. I asked the curator Tamadher AlFahal about the show’s origins and she invited me to the talk she was presenting (as part of her PHD) that evening and an open invite to a further panel discussion about the cultural production of the Arab Gulf that is happening on the 19th @ 5pm in the IPS :’AS NOTED/UNNOTICED’ a part of “I AM KHALEEJI”; a series of events and happenings that offers prelude to the contemporary art scene of the Arab Gulf.
Thumbnail 1
Thumbnail 2
Thumbnail 3
Thumbnail 4
Thumbnail 5
Thumbnail 6
Thumbnail 7
Thumbnail 8
Thumbnail 10
free Hugs campaign
learning
slow down female walking
three prints
IMG_4172
my
IMG_4178
IMG_4188
IMG_4180
From the discussions it is clear the art scene “within the Arab Gulf (or GCC) has been through a state of flux. Typically exposed to Western audiences, and the greater art world, as a strongly diluted stereotypical image of the Middle East. The Arab Gulf’s distinctive art identity remains undervalued.
This project addresses the misconceptions of the contemporary art scene in the Gulf, it offers an alternative view that is diverse, unique and vernacular in attempt to understand its complexity and dynamics. Specifically focusing on shedding light on the Gulf art scene as a distinctive voice within the Middle East. “
Issues of identity, religion, gender are clear in the work on show, but the range of video, photography, graphic and printed artworks are strong in their own right. There are plays with sign posts (literally) and the two photographic/print based pieces – The rise of Maliha @ecstasybash and My Ghutra is Me @stefanistan deal directly with issues of personal image and identity in clever, creative and insightful ways. ‘Maliha : a Name meaning having beauty, kindness and strength’ and ‘Ghutra’ the traditional male headress and as one of the subjects told the artist : ‘the eyes are the window on the soul, but first tell me how you wear your ghutra and I will tell you who you are……’ Both pieces are portrait based although the whole portrait is not shown in either works.
@ecstasybash’ instagram bio is understated : “Photographer , Slightly Artistic, mildly photographic”. Her website also provides further insight into the inspirations for The rise of Maliha.
The show is also referred to By the Book @ulafaa
About the Speakers for the upcoming panel on the 19th October:
Khulod Albugami is an artist and an academic member at the College of Art & Design, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University in Saudi Arabia since 2011. She is currently doing her PhD in Fine Art at Birmingham City University, UK. In her research, she investigates the possibility to formulate different approaches, where art and spatial practices can be used for social empowerment by women in Saudi Arabia. Her main area of interest and research are cultural production in Saudi Arabia and its impacts on creative spaces made by women.
Quentin de Pimodan works as an analyst at Katch & Reyners, a public affairs agency. He studied engineering in Paris and then for several years worked for a French publishing house that aims at explaining national and international administrations to young audiences. He spent a year in Yemen in 2008 and was based in Bahrain for two years in 2014 where he co-authored “The Khaleej Voice”, a six books series documenting the urban artists in the six countries composing the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). He also contributes to Greece-based think-tank, the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS), with a particular focus on Iraq.
Amal Khalaf is the Assistant Curator of the Serpentine Gallery’s Edgeware Road Project, an international residency and site-specific research programme based in the Edgeware Road neighbourhood of London. Amal curatorial and research activities address themes of urbanism, community media activism and art through participatory projects and media initiatives. In her work as a researcher and curator, she has been involved in collaborative programming with artists and community groups in London and Cairo, in addition to running activities ranging from screenings, performances, seminar series and conferences. Previously, she worked at Gasworks, London, the Townhouse Gallery, Cairo and Al Riwaq Gallery, Bahrain, as well as co-founding Hold and Freight, London, a project space based in an abandoned Victorian railway arch. Khalaf is also a Research Associate with the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, co-authoring a book on moving image in public space.
Convenor
Anthony Downey is Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa within the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University. Recent publications include Don’t Shrink Me to the Size of a bullet: The Works of Hiwa K (Walther König Books, 2017); Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East (Sternberg Press, 2016); Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2015); and Art and Politics Now (Thames and Hudson, 2014).
Chair
Tamadher AlFahal is a Designer, TEDx Speaker and Co-founder of Ulafa’a Initiative; a reconciliation-through-the-arts project. Her practice extends from community art projects to installations. She sheds light on areas of cultural conflicts and religious misconceptions influenced by her upbringing in the Arab world. She also co-founded Beige and Teal with artist Leon D., a creative platform for art and design that celebrates social and cultural narratives of Bahrain. Her main areas of interest are cultural identity, art collaboration and the creative process. Tamadher is currently doing her PhD in Birmingham City University, UK where she investigates philosophical approaches in contemporary Islamic design studies.
moon stories, inkjet print #2/5 2017Museum Enabler Steve S enjoys the print drawing of him reading moon storiesMuseum Enabler Steve S and Jonnie Turpie shake on it
Museum of the Moon
Museum of the Moon is a new touring artwork by UK artist Luke Jerram.
Measuring seven metres in diameter, the moon features 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the lunar surface. At an approximate scale of 1:500,000, each centimetre of the internally lit spherical sculpture represents 5km of the moon’s surface.
Moon Story, Drawing and social media.
The original drawing was begun when the artist visited the Museum of the Moon exhibition and spotted a ‘moonlight’ in the corner in the dark expanse housing Luke Jerram’s massive moon. On a closer view the moonlight was a table lamp beamed on a book being read by Steve to an entranced family. The illuminated reader and family provided a strong composition to base a drawing on. The artist took iPhone pictures, transferred them to an iPad, into adobe procreate and using an apple pencil the drawing was created through a number of states. An early version was posted. on Instagram channel where Museum Manager Jessica spotted it, showed it to Steve who was surprised and impressed. Jess used Instagram to contact the Artist to let him know Steve would like a copy if possible.
Once the drawing was finished proofs were made on a high quality Cannon inkjet printer on to a range of papers before an edition of 5 were printed on 300 gsm aquarelle off white paper. Two months on from the Saturday encounter in the Museum of the Moon the 2nd print of the edition was presented to Steve who along with Jessica enjoyed seeing the mounted fine print. Of course it quickly appeared on the @thinktankmuseum feed.
Presentations from Day 1 at Loughborough University Fine Art Department in this slide show.
Tracey drawing and phenomenology
Tracey drawing and phenomenology
Following an introduction to Drawing / phenomenology: tracing lived experiences through drawing, by Conference Organiser and host Deborah Hartley, a diverse and insightful series of presentations covering intensely local to expansive global drawing projects ….
Deborah Harty: drawing is phenomenology?
Jane Cook: Drawing the Domestic: a practice-led phenomenological study through–drawing investigating notions of the experience of home.
Martin Lewis: Perfunctory Acts of Drawing.
Marion Arnold: The Sensing, Knowing Hand: a Phenomenological Drawing Tool.
Eleanor Morgan: Fixing the ephemeral: the materiality of sand-drawings.
Phil Sawdon: … feel my way … outline judgements … I made some pictures
…… there was a choice of 4 workshops for the afternoon session.
I selected the intriguingly titled : Gained in Translation:Drawing Art History presented by Sarah Jaffray from the Bridget Riley Foundation at The British Museum. Surprisingly this was a participatory session where we were encouraged to draw from the collection of British Museum prints inc great masters and more recent drawing works. Beginning with quick draw exercises to get us loosened up we worked through pictures at speed and then on to a longer 10 minute drawing session. My selected drawing for this longer session was Michel Thevoz in the library of the Art Brut Museum, Graphite by Ariane Laroux. This longer focus on ‘copying’ or ‘Re, Representing’ a drawing enabled me to begin to understand the flow of the drawing through the artist’s eyes, by copying her drawing with intense attention to detail to honestly copy and represent her drawing.
The drawing captured the subject, but left much of the subject out. Much of the paper remained white and untouched. Following the drawing from head to hand seemed to reveal decisions made by Ariane Laroux to draw her subject, which may have gone unnoticed without the attention to detail required to copy her drawing. This seemed to confirm the thesis that faithful copying from original art is valuable to the copier in terms of dexterity, skills and insight into the artistic process.
I was not attempting to make better the original, but to replicate it honestly to the best of one’s ability to make a genuine copy. I felt the process of drawing Ariane’s Drawing brought me closer to her process to draw her subject. It was no longer an exercise, but an engaged desire to be true to her drawing, and to be with her, in her mark making and her decisions to draw parts of her subject that illuminated her whole subject. I did not know or see her subject before her, as I did not know the Ruben’s or Leonardo’s subjects, but with licence and dedicated time to draw from her picture I got to know the subject and even closer to the artist’s representation of the subject. Whilst being drawn into the process and giving as much as I could into the timeframe I felt I wanted to talk to Ariane about her drawing choices, in this portrait, because I thought I ‘knew more’ than when I began.
Sarah Jaffray’s workshop focussed on translation, which is wholly pertinent, however I took from it ‘the right to copy’ as an educational, skills and insightful process of value. She, through the Bridget Riley Foundation, encourages drawings of the drawings, for the benefit of of the contemporary drawer.
This process encouraged me to question where Drawing and Phenomenology meet?
The workshop abstract :
Gained in Translation: Drawing Art History
Drawing from drawing is as old as the artist’s workshop: students drawing from their master’s work, tacked to the wall of a studio, began their journey to mastery through faithful copying. Today however, in the wake of post-modernism’s reaction against authority, copying from a ‘master’ feels outdated and has thus been erased from contemporary arts education.
For the past three years the Bridget Riley Art Foundation at the British Museum has worked with over 1,000 university art students to revive and interrogate the value of drawing from drawing as a contemporary research method. In the process of over 150 workshops we found that students who initially dismissed the practice as ‘servile copying’ began to legitimise the process with the language of translation.
Building on this qualitative research, our workshop will examine the practice of drawing from drawing through the lens of translation theory. We will discuss translation, in the manner of Walter Benjamin, as a mode of cognition that allows the translator to critically interrogate their own artistic language. Working through a series of drawing exercises from (reproductions of) drawings in the British Museum’s Prints and Drawings collection we will actively explore the question: what can translating teach the translator
Those interested in drawing from the collection can make an appointment at : www.britishmuseum.org.
The Artworks used from the British Museum collection:
1. Paul Cézanne, Study of a plaster Cupid, c.1890; graphite. 1935,0413.2
2. Bridget Riley, Untitled 2 (Circles with verticals), 1960; Pencil, blue ink and gouache paper. 2013,7097.2
3. Vincent van Gogh, La Crau from Montmajour, France, May 1888; Pen and brown ink, over black chalk and graphite. 1968,0210.20
4. Ariane Laroux, Michel Thevoz in the library of the Art Brut Museum; graphite. 2001,0929.12
5. Théodore Géricault, Study of Soldiers fighting Civilians, 1823; Graphite over red chalk. 1920,0216.3
6. Sol Lewitt, Untitled, 1971. Pen and yellow ink. 1981,1003.27
7. Antoine Watteau, Studies of a woman standing, seen from behind, a half-length woman with head in profile to left and women’s hands, 1684-1721; Red and black chalks, 1857,0228.213
8. Peter Paul Rubens, Mary Magdalene, c. 1620; Black chalk, heightened with white. 1912,1214.5; H16
9. Frank Auerbach, First drawing for ‘Ruth’, 1994; graphite. 2013,7059.48
10. Leonardo, The Virgin and Child, 1478-80; Pen and brown ink, over leadpoint, the lower sketch in leadpoint only. 1860,0616.100, P&P 100
11. Barbara Hepworth, Sculptural forms, c. 1938; ink on paper. 2008,7082.1
12. Honoré Daumier, Clown playing a drum, c.1865/7; Pen and black and grey ink, grey wash, watercolour, touches of gouache, and conté crayon, over black chalk underdrawing. 1968,0210.30
On leaving the School of Art in Birmingham’s historic city centre I noticed a plaque to my right that had escaped my notice on the many occasions I have descended the stairs down to Margaret street. The municipal history of the building is there for all to see in the ornate gold stone carved type : “This Building was erected by the Corporation of Birmingham for use as a School of Art, upon land given for that purpose by Grecoe Collmore Esq with funds contributed by Miss Louisea Anne Ryland and MESSers Richard and George Tangyea 1884.”
As I ruminated on the age of municipal and philanthropic value of the Arts to Birmingham, I crossed to the Waterhall gallery, a part of an equally cultured contribution to Birmingham’s proud city centre – The Museum and Art Gallery.
Sitting on the steps was Pete James the curator of Matt Collingshaw’s Thresholds. Pete is a mine off knowledge and information on the unique role Birmingham and its scientists and artisans played in the invention of photography. Thresholds captures the amazing moment Fox Talbot made his first Photogenic Drawings in King Edwards School. He and Matt have recreated the space he displayed his first pictures:
The jester and the cat, by Henry Fox TalbotFox Talbot’s original motivation
The vr box in the Waterhall Gallery
Behind the large wooden box in the gallery is a white space with a few empty white cases and tables. A number of people walk around the space with an electronic backpack and headset seemingly seeing and touching invisible objects. I was kitted up with the gear by the gallery assistants and encouraged to venture into the space. I was immediately ensconced in a 1830’s room with wooden ceilings, paintings, candle chandeliers and Talbot’s first photogenic drawings. Astonishing in their lifelike quality as one moved around them. Even more surprising was the ability to see a cloudy white version of your hand hovering above a picture, which when you turn your hand towards you, appears in front of you to inspect more closely. This is virtual reality. What would Talbot have thought about this when he first showed his photogenic drawings to amazed friends, students, teachers and scientists? How image making has developed in 200 years, from Birmingham New Street’s School. The school was demolished in the mid 1800’s and rebuilt as King Edwards opposite another gallery the Barber Institute.
Speaking to Pete I enquired when the term photography was applied to describe this process of capturing images with light. He clarified my question by saying Fox Talbot and Herschel used the word photography to describe the process whereas Talbot used the Photogenic drawing description to describe the objects of the process. There is much more information in the exhibition, including Stereo images of the original room, the King Edwards building and a film by Ravi Deepres and Michael Clifford on the Camera Obscura.
Pete James captures pictures with smart phone camera
The show is only on for a couple more days in Birmingham before it begins its journey from the birthplace of photography to its next venue Laycock Abbey.
Go see it if you can. If you can’t, here’s a good illustrative film :
Had whistle stop tour round the BP Portrait Awards 2017 at the National Portrait Gallery.
Many great works including the Tavel Show winner. New and old techniques inc egg tempera for EMMA by Antony Williams. Daniel Coves picture was a departure for him as he usually paints the back of his subjects. However for this show he painted Blind Portrait facing forward. I have captured visitors backs as they look at the arresting/moving blind portrait.
BP portrait awards
egg tempera hair
Brian Sayers portrait met his needs to capture “the type of features he likes to portray” . This something we tend to forget. i.e. A portrait is also a reflection of the artist’s desire as well as the character of the sitter.
My selected drawing for this longer session was 
On leaving the School of Art in Birmingham’s historic city centre I noticed a plaque to my right that had escaped my notice on the many occasions I have descended the stairs down to Margaret street. The municipal history of the building is there for all to see in the ornate gold stone carved type : “This Building was erected by the Corporation of Birmingham for use as a School of Art, upon land given for that purpose by Grecoe Collmore Esq with funds contributed by Miss Louisea Anne Ryland and MESSers Richard and George Tangyea 1884.”
Sitting on the steps was Pete James the curator of Matt Collingshaw’s Thresholds. Pete is a mine off knowledge and information on the unique role Birmingham and its scientists and artisans played in the invention of photography. Thresholds captures the amazing moment Fox Talbot made his first Photogenic Drawings in King Edwards School. He and Matt have recreated the space he displayed his first pictures:
I was kitted up with the gear by the gallery assistants and encouraged to venture into the space. I was immediately ensconced in a 1830’s room with wooden ceilings, paintings, candle chandeliers and Talbot’s first photogenic drawings. Astonishing in their lifelike quality as one moved around them. Even more surprising was the ability to see a cloudy white version of your hand hovering above a picture, which when you turn your hand towards you, appears in front of you to inspect more closely. This is virtual reality. What would Talbot have thought about this when he first showed his photogenic drawings to amazed friends, students, teachers and scientists? How image making has developed in 200 years, from Birmingham New Street’s School. The school was demolished in the mid 1800’s and rebuilt as King Edwards opposite another gallery the Barber Institute.
