Transition Installation at Exeter Castle

The corridor under the Castle with prison cells on either side.

The three holding cells in which I installed my drawings they measured 6′ x 4′.

View of six small drawings in one of the cells.

the grill in the door of the cell through which prisoners could be observed.

Large Transition Drawing, 180 x 120 cms,  ‘floating’ about two feet off the floor and covering the total floor area.

Transition Net drawing installed in the second cell.

View of the Net Drawing through the grill before the lights were turned off and the drawing was lit through the grill with spotlights which gave an added dimension of shadow to the drawings.

Transition Drawing lit through the grill clearly showing the shadow effect.

View through the grill

View of the Transition pencil drawing and shadow photographed inside the cell without the grill.

Similar view of the Transition Net Drawing.

Transition Drawing without the shadow.

Record of the installation of drawings in the prison cells in the basement of Exeter Castle.

Trial installation at Exeter Castle

Well the drawing looked great in the space but unfortunately the floor plan I had for the size of the space was wildly inaccurate. I wasn’t expecting it to be precise to the millimetre but I didn’t expect to have a thirty centimetre gap in the width. Entirely my own fault since I should have checked the measurements before starting the drawing. So home and back to the drawing board literally. However I don’t really mind because he lighting of the piece through the grid in the door, projecting the shadows onto the drawing looks great. I have no idea how I am going to photograph it through the closed door yet. But I will think of something.

Transition Drawing 3 Series of details

Transition 5. Pencil on paper, 180 x 120 cm.

Transition Drawings

I finished the first of two large drawings for the Transition Show at Exeter Castle today. The work will transfer to the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf from Exeter on the 18 March. The Exeter show opens on 6th March. This has been a difficult drawing to light in order to photograph it and the full size image does not do it justice although it does give an idea of the scale. I am going to do a trial installation in Exeter this week to experiment with the lighting so I hope I will get some better shots of it.

Studio Visit

With a studio visit planned for tomorrow, my workspace is looking uncharacteristically tidy. It won’t last like this for long! New drawing in progress for the Transition Show at Exeter Castle and the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, on the easle.

A Digression!

I know I haven’t written any thing about the Drawing Room II show. But I did go to the Private View and it is an interesting show with a lot of work to look at. Its free entry on Saturday 7th February so don’t miss the chance! There is some inyriguing work from UWE which stretched the bounds of definitions of drawing and the ‘hang ‘ of the Methuen Gallery under the curatorship of Graham Woodruff , Director of Bristol Drawing School, created a beautifully clean space which allowed the drawings to speak for themselves.

This has nothing to with Cill Rialaig now but I am temporarily moving away from this work to get involved in a new project for a little while which is based at Exeter Castle curated by Exeter Artspace. The cells in the basement of the castle are going to be the venue for Transition, an exhibition of mostly video, sound and light installations which respond to the location. I will be making drawings in response to the space which will focus of the restriction of movement – the holding cells measure 6′ x 3′ – and the lack of natural daylight and the marking of time.

Drawing Room II RWA Bristol

This exhibition opens this weekend at the RWA in Bristol. It promises to be a very good show, RWA Press Release below and click on the link for opening times and directions. More about the show after I have been to the Private View on Saturday.

Detail of Cadences 3 one of three drawings from the Cill Rialaig Project Residency in the RWA show.

This is the first time any work from the Cill Rialaig residency has been shown in public and these drawings were made during my time there.

RWA Press Releases

Drawing Room II
18th January – 15th February 2009
To kick-start the year the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol is hosting an exciting new drawing exhibition. Drawing Room II will ride again after the great successes of its forerunner in 2006. This time, the exhibition will feature RWA Academicians, University of the West of England honours graduates and artists from the Bristol Drawing School, as well as a collection of drawings from the RWA’s Permanent Collection and a beautiful portrait on loan of Nobel Prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin by Bryan Organ. Also on display will be drawings by local architect David Austin.

On show in the main two galleries will be works by RWA Academicians including painters Kurt Jackson and Anthony Eyton RA, sculptor John Huggins and printmakers James Beale and Bronwen Bradshaw. These Academicians will challenge our perceptions of what constitutes a drawing. For example, Rachael Nee draws with smoke, using the flame as a ‘living brush’. She uses the sooty carbon trace left from a candle flame to make her smoke drawings.

DRAW group (past graduates of UWE), known for their innovative drawing workshops, are to present a unique interactive work to get everyone involved. Characteristic of the aims to reach out, DRAW has devised a piece inviting visitors to participate in a continuous line drawing. Look for the paper squares within the exhibition and enjoy your opportunity to be included in this innovative and skilful display of drawing approaches..

Amongst other artists, Bristol Drawing School will be presenting Valerie Bowes. Hindu Art, Holy men, Angels, Byzantium, towers and monasteries, cloisters and penitents and simple people going about their daily lives are all embraced in her work. Sometimes one catches a glimpse of the sea, a beach or a bird free of its cage sitting above an archway. Derek Balmer, RWA President said, “these works are bold, discreet and convincing. The drawings in pencil or charcoal are imbued with a poetry and clarity that stays in ones memory long after the first impression.”.

The notion of drawing is highly contested and has been the subject of challenging and contentious debate within recent years. Whether a drawing can be more than just pencil on paper will be a question visitors can ask themselves as they wander round this stunning and provocative exhibition. Most works will be for sale and many quite inexpensive.

Private View : 17th January 2-5pm
Gallery Opening Times : 10am – 5.30pm (Mon-Sat), 2-5pm (Sun)
Admission Fees : £4 adults, £2.50 concessions, U16 Free

Please note there will be free admission for all on Saturday 7th February

For images and further information please contact:
Kate Morgan, RWA Marketing Officer Tel: 0117 9735129
email: Kate.Morgan@rwa.org.uk

Charcoal drawing 145 x 125 cms

Large charcoal drawing

I have just finished this, the largest drawing so far in the series, mapping my walks on Ballinskelligs Beach and the journey back up to Bolus Head.

Dusk light and In Praise of Shadows

Whilst thinking about the way my work is going, the three drawings above have all been done in the last couple of weeks, I decided to re-read In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki. I had forgotten how lyrical it was. He talks of the patina granted to metal objects through use, a patina which is prized over shininess. He praises the quality that lamplight imparts and the silence and mystery of alcoves which never see the light of day. These thoughts seem appropriate to the qualities of the charcoal surfaces on which I am drawing. The patina on these drawings, rubbed with paper, speak of time, they are very labour intensive, and the pause between light and dark which happens at dusk or just before dawn. These are the qualities of light which I frequently saw at Cill Rialaig and with which I want to suffuse these drawings.

Mapping Space

Pushing boundaries and revisiting the Cornish Art Scene

New drawings. They are jumping between delicate pencil subtleties and bold dark charcoal drawings. Both are a response to the same journey, between Ballinskelligs Beach and Bolus Head, but are responding to different times of day, different weather conditions, the drama of dark clouds in a threatening storm-tossed sky as opposed to a gentle reverie.

On Friday I went to the launch of the Revolver book at PZAG (Penzance Art gallery). There is some interesting work in this very beautifully produced book which I am already delving into. It was the brainchild of Jesse Leroy Smith and Volke Stox, two artists who seem to be making things happen outside of the box of what is conventionally accepted as ‘Cornish art’.

There was a challenging show at Tate St Ives of work by Austrian artist, Heimo Zobernigan. Installations of eye-searingly coloured fabric, electric blue, red and a green which was literally dazzling. Gold chairs standing in for visitors were juxtaposed with works from the Tate’s collection. In a book about his work alongside the exhibition there was an image of gold chairs alone as an installation which I preferred to their intervention here. Was this an experiment in installation or curation, most of his work is untitled so not much help there, and just as I though I was getting to grips with what it was about the goal posts seemed to move? Zobernigan says of his work:‘With art I would like to raise questions and as a result produce things that put themselves in question.’ There was some great work there which I hadn’t seen before, a Frink bronze of a dead chicken lying on its side, a Picasso Cock and a wire mesh Barbara Hepworth.

At Newlyn Art gallery there were two video installations by Nick Crow and Ian Rawlinson which were spectacular. It is difficult to describe them in a way which shows their impact. The first one, Carriers’ Prayer, was 11 minutes long and started with a low lit shot of a church interior with what looked liked a forest of stakes in the middle ground. The stakes were wrapped in plastic bags so they were uneven and knobbly and not at all beautiful. It was very still then the top of one of the stakes burst into flames followed by another and then another. As they burnt, periodically globules of flame broke off and sparks of light shot upwards. It was accompanied by a sound track of hisses and small bangs as these small explosions were choreographed in this quiet space. Finally when all of the individual little fires went out there was just one left, burnt to the ground which just faded away and went out. It was very beautiful. The second Video was more spectacular in a way. It was the interior of a gallery space in which fireworks were set off. The rockets and bangers ricocheted off the walls and at times the noise was deafening but the lines and dots and streaks of light were very much drawing with light so it was powerful in a different way from the first one. I liked the first one best though.

The link below is to an image of Carriers’ Prayer on the Newlyn Art Gallery site.

http://www.newlynartgallery.co.uk/?crowe_and_rawlinson