Last week I spent a day drawing. All of it went in the bin except for the last drawing which took me just five minutes. However, yesterday I went to a great drawing exhibition which has renewed my enthusiasm.
The exhibition, “Drawing: Sculpture” is on at the Drawing Room in SE1. It explores the relationship between drawing and sculpture which is one of my key interests. It moves away from being about ‘drawing in space’ to a matter of material concern where drawing happens within the sculpture.
As a sculptor I am excited by the substance of the drawing material and the texture of the virtual space. The exhibition, which featured artists including Anna Barriball, Alice Channer and Dan Shaw-Town, showed work using a range of materials beyond the traditional drawing media. It showed how substances like graphite and charcoal can be used in surprising ways.
Much has been written about the relationship between drawing and sculpture. For me, drawing with materials is an activity that happens either in two or three dimensions and has an eye to composition of form, texture and balance.
The exhibition both confirmed my thoughts and provided added inspiration.
For the last couple of weeks I have re-focused on the art of Richard Wentworth. I initially looked at his work some time ago but further reading has revealed some new and useful information about how he chooses his ready-mades. I have also been experimenting with some new materials which proved eventful but, unfortunately, failed.
Wentworth talks about the issue of prejudice when responding to objects and how we translate meaning without actually looking at them. We have an instinct about how we perceive things but need to nurture a deeper curiosity. In a BBC archive film (Five Sculptors) he illustrates the point by saying that children have an ability to respond to objects without confusion or problems.
He wants his objects to become ‘ready-mades of the imagination’. I’m not clear about this, but by a combination of placement and choice he achieves contradiction and absurdity. There is a link between the natural and the manufactured in his work. He combines raw materials such as linen, concrete or brass with industrially made objects. For example, a waste paper basket sealed with concrete, or a cast object resting on a pillow. In certain respects this aspect of his work resonates with my own but, for me, the choosing of a ready-made is also the catalyst towards making a new object that re-presents certain qualities of the original.
Experiments with glass wax resulted in setting off the fire alarm. This was not popular with Health and Safety! I then resorted to making the same castings with resin but the whole thing got stuck to the plastic moulds and could not be extracted. Finally, I used plaster. The resulting objects are casts of plastic-moulded toys, in the shape of molluscs, which have stainless steel extensions which might be handles or operators. The effect is mildly unsettling.
