The Drawing Room’s biennial drawing exhibition is back, with over 200 works on paper by artists such as Charles Avery, Huma Bhabha, Nikhil Chopra and Kathy Prendergast sitting alongside those better known as sculptors, such as Richard Deacon, Francis Upritchard and Alison Wilding, and painters, such as Ryan Mosley and George Shaw.
Work is presented in the Drawing Room’s gallery in south London and will be available to purchase via an online auction which runs from 11-26 March. All proceeds will go towards supporting the organisation’s exhibition, learning and publishing programme and study library.
Artists were selected by Drawing Room directors Mary Doyle, Kate Macfarlane and Katharine Stout, with additional nominations by leading international artists, museum directors, curators and collectors. All the drawings are on A4 supports, with each piece given equal prominence in the exhibition.
The exhibition includes London-based artist Sonia Boyce‘s powerful work, 2018, a pencil drawing on tracing paper that derives from a recent incident at Paddington station and ‘speaks of the tensions of our contemporary moment, post the referendum vote’.
Scottish artist Charles Avery‘s work, Untitled (Courting Couple, Onomotopeia, City Wall), is part of his ongoing project exploring an imaginary island, which he charts through drawings, sculptures, texts, ephemera, and 16mm animations. As Avery has said, the island – with its fantastical flora and fauna, its eccentric cosmology and customs – is “a place that helps me to think.”
Poughkeepsie-based artist Huma Bhabha‘s work Untitled addresses themes of colonialism, war, displacement, and memories of place. Creating ‘haunting human figures that hover between abstraction and figuration, monumentality and entropy’, the work features ink, collage and pastel on paper.
London-based artist Layla Curtis works across a broad range of medium, including drawing, collage, video, photography, and mixed media. For the Drawing Biennial she has contributed World Political (The Americas), made from ink on drafting film and depicting a manipulated map of the Americas. Some countries have been displaced by others of a similar size and shape in order to create a new fictional geography.
London-based artist Rana Begum, who is part of the selection panel for New Contemporaries 2019, has contributed WP309. 2019, a minimalist work made from reflective tape on paper. Her visual language draws from the urban landscape as well as geometric patterns from traditional Islamic art and architecture.
Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry works with a variety of traditional media, including ceramics, cast iron, bronze, printmaking and tapestry. His works reference his own childhood and life as a transvestite while also engaging with wider social issues including ‘class and politics, sex and religion, as well as Brexit and divided Britain’.
Kent-based artist Rose Wylie is a recent recipient of the Charles Wollaston Award, John Moores Painting Prize, and the Paul Hamlyn Award. Her work was created using biro, coloured pencil and collage on a recycled envelope and paper, and is a ‘homage’ drawing to a painting of artist and writer Faith Ringgold.
Suffolk and London-based artist Ryan Gander is a previous recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award for Visual Arts and the ABN AMRO prize in the Netherlands. His ink on paper work is a ‘sketch about the anxiety of influence, fear of mortality and parapossible cognitive time travel’.
The Drawing Biennial continues at Drawing Room, London until 26 March 2019. The online auction runs from 10am, 11 March to 9.30pm, 26 March. www.drawingroom.org.uk
Images:
1. Sonia Boyce, 2018, 2018. Pencil on tracing paper, 29.7 x 21 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Drawing Room
2. Charles Avery, Untitled (Courting Couple, Onomotopeia, City Wall), 2019. Pencil and acrylic on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Drawing Room
3. Huma Bhabha, Untitled, 2018. Ink, collage and pastel on paper, 29.6 x 21 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Drawing Room
4. Layla Curtis, World Political (The Americas), 2019. Ink on drafting film,29.8 x 21.1 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Drawing Room
5. Rana Begum, WP309. 2019. 2019. Reflective tape on paper, 30 x 21 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Drawing Room
6. Grayson Perry, Untitled, 2019. Pen on paper, 21 x 29.7 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Drawing Room
7. Rose Wylie, Mama can sing, quilt picture, homage drawing, 2018. Biro, coloured pencil and collage on a recycled envelope and paper, 29.7 x 21 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Drawing Room
8. Ryan Gander, Sketch about the anxiety of influence, fear of mortality and parapossible cognitive time travel, 2018. Ink on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Drawing Room
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