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- Volume 1, Issue 2, 2016
Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2016
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2016
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Towards [hyper] drawing... through ambiguity
Authors: Russell Marshall and Phil SawdonAbstractThis article explores ambiguity in contemporary fine art drawing through the presentation of a proposal and subsequent response. Drawing within three figurations – Empson’s seven types of ambiguity in literary prose (first published in 1930), the logical fallacies of ambiguity, and grammatical prepositions (e.g. between, beyond, beside, etc.) – the article aims to investigate the opportunities that arise if we are ambivalent to, subvert, or challenge definitions of drawing. The article critiques the origins of hyperdrawing by tracing from a point of retrieval, where a conceptual and practical view ‘point’ is set into motion beginning with a revisiting of the author’s previous research into this hyperview. This trace moves through the three figurations: mapping the seven ambiguities, overlaid and interwoven with five fallacies, drawing emergent prepositions, in advancing logical disorder. An example drawn response, titled Seventh (from a series of drawings titled First through to Seventh), is selectively unwoven in the context of the figurations. The article discusses the opportunities highlighted through this response, returning to the proposal that a position of ambiguity (a lack of definition) is desirable and presents a fallacious definition. Ultimately (drawing) ambiguity is left unresolved; however, its opportunities are explored through an examination of the boundary between literary criticism and drawing.
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What is a drawing?
By Clive AshwinAbstractDrawing, both as process and product, has proved notoriously resistant to definition. The current need for a reformulated definition is made more pressing by the postulation of ‘an expanded field of drawing’ comparable with a presumed expanded field of sculpture. This expanded field of drawing is characterized by a widespread dissolution of the traditional boundaries between categories such as drawing, writing, diagram and code. A revolution in art practice has been accompanied by a corresponding resurgence in analytical theory and critical context, reflected in exhibitions, publications and the formation of professional networks. In such a period of transformation and change it is advisable that we revisit the issue of definition of terms and practices. A variety of approaches to definition are reviewed, including ostensive and stipulative strategies. Wittgenstein’s concept of definition based upon ‘family resemblance’ is tested but found unhelpful in this case. The philosophical concepts of qualia and supervenience are introduced as useful strategies in formulating a consistent definition. The role of intention is appraised, as is the legitimacy of applying the concept of drawing by transference to print media. The article concludes with a proposal that there is still scope for a stipulative definition of drawing, and that the essence of drawing resides in the articulation of planar space. It is proposed that in this context the role of intention is immaterial. It is suggested that by deploying the concepts of qualia and supervenience the appellation ‘drawing’ can with some justification be extended by transference to a wide range of analogous products such as painting and prints.
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Drawing for sport
More LessAbstractArt and sports are located at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum and do not easily mingle, but artists and athletes have more in common than we may think. There are parallels between the disciplines of drawing and athletic performance that can enhance our understanding of how attention and perception function in both sports and drawing. This article shares an approach to a hybrid art practice that merges drawing traditions with the discipline of athletics, and suggests that athletic drawings can shed new light on the body’s role in shaping the processes of observation and perception. This exploration has taken various forms over the past decade including studio drawings, live performance and the participation of others. This art practice refigures prevailing ideas of observational drawing by extending the concept of observation beyond the primacy of the visual. Performing athletic drawings creates a state of heightened bodily awareness in which observation is a complex corporeal phenomenon. In addition to visualizing bodily limits in time and space, athletic drawings also reveal the psychic boundaries we draw between our environment and ourselves, providing a different lens through which we may understand our physical relationship with the world.
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Time trace: A drawn perception
More LessAbstractIf drawing is the trace of an action, and action is transitory, could drawing then exist as a perception of time in space? ‘Time Trace: a drawn perception’ investigates the tactility of the drawing discipline specifically within the context of performative practices. The article aims to discover the act of drawing as a way of marking time and the role of tactility in the experience of live action. By examining the collaborative project, what remains and is to come by Katrina Brown and Rosanna Irvine, the article explores how artists activate the auditory and visual senses to discover the transitory space of past, present and future. In relation to temporal experience, Henri Bergson’s phenomenology of ‘successive sensations’ is analysed alongside Amelia Jones’ interrogation of materiality concerned with the performative use of the artist’s body.
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Drawing in duos: The Journeys and Intersections Collaboration Project between Istanbul and Worcester
Authors: Ilgim Veryeri Alaca and Piet GroblerAbstractThis article focuses on a collaborative drawing project carried out between two undergraduate drawing courses, one in I·stanbul and the other in Worcester, during the autumn 2015 semester. Duos – teams of two working remotely – took turns to work on the same drawing in correspondence for three months, sharing the changing images online with one another. The project introduced a collaborative method of learning based on drawing, initiated cultural exchange and cooperation. The role of drawing in the project was critical due to the direct but gradual nature of transmitting meaning onto paper. Outcomes of this project consisted of a flexible and playful creation process for students making use of the element of chance. They sought alternative ways to finalize a drawing and experienced the benefits of artistic co-production. The project has the capacity to inspire artists, instructors and others interested in creative partnership in different disciplines and can be of value as an educational model.
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A gathering dilemma: The Drawing International Brisbane Symposium
Authors: William Platz and Kellie O’DempseyAbstractAs drawing researchers and practitioners doggedly pursue academic conferences and symposia dedicated to their discipline, it has become increasingly necessary to question the forms, structures and relevance of the academic conference to drawing research. One of the strengths of arts-based research is its incongruity with conventional systems and protocols in university culture. A lack of accordance yields forms of knowledge and reforms of codes necessary to a progressive position. In 2015, a biennial drawing research symposium was inaugurated in Brisbane, Australia titled Drawing International Brisbane (DIB). The event sought to generate a model for the academic symposium in which visual practitioners, theorists, historians, curators, students and administrators could coalesce in a productive and vigorous programme. Combining conventional academic papers, plenary sessions, exhibitions, artist’s presentations and workshops, DIB produced friction, synthesis and multiplication from components that did not radically depart from established norms, but were redeployed in a motivated programme to reinvigorate the academic symposium as a meaningful environment for the production and dissemination of knowledge. An account of one of the DIB2015 Conference streams evidences the potency of this method.
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Botanics Revisited IV
More LessAbstractBotanics Revisited IV takes its starting point from my personal attachment to the New Zealand bush – isolating the foliage qualities of texture, colour, light filtration, patterning and visual layering in software programs such as Photoshop®, Illustrator® and After Effects® to create parallels to thought processes. The first steps are undertaken by printing a simple mathematical triangular pattern on watercolour paper (reflective of how information and experience link to unconscious cultural knowledge and emotional stories, directing the way we interact with and perceive the world) and then I let my mind wander while brushing pigment into the above, each stage in turn being photographically documented, to see the texture growing like an organic mass, thoughts and reactions connecting, creating understanding and the personal within the boundaries of the pattern.
Secondly, a time-based data projection is created by transferring the above watercolour documentation into After Effects®; exploring editing, filtering, scale, speed, rotation and layering images as possible visual vehicles to mimic memory storage and recall in the brain. The multifaceted and constantly changing nature of the artworks reflects how the brain tries to make sense of the visual world, searching for similarities between the here and now and what we have done and seen before; our current mood and mind state overlaying our prior experience, filtering and combining the here and now with what has been.
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Cutcomb Polaroid
More LessAbstractCutcomb Polaroid explores the relationships of drawing processes, between digital practice and the handmade, and image creation in relation to theory.
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Reviews
Authors: Lucy O’Donnell, Andrea Kantrowitz, Angela Brew and Michelle FavaAbstractThe Prison Drawing Project: Contemporary Drawing Exhibition, The Old Borough of Scarborough Jail, Scarborough, Yorkshire, 13–14 February
We All Draw: The Fourth International Thinking through Drawing Symposium, Bargehouse, OXO Tower Wharf, London, 6–8 November 2015
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Book Review
By Mark JacksonAbstractANCHOR, Joe Graham (ed.) (2015) London: Marmalade Publishers of Visual Theory, 120 pp., ISBN: 978-0-9933373-0-7, p/bk, £8.99, €10.00
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