Meetings, meetings, training days, admin, more meetings, bid writing, discussing new projects …. all actually very enjoyable.
I was in the studio again yesterday and with the sun streaming in through the windows it did not feel cold, though I was wrapped up warm.
I went to the Artists in Conversation event at The Drawing Room in the evening http://drawingroom.org.uk/events/biennial-in-conve… and had a look at the Drawing: Sculpture exhibition at the same time http://drawingroom.org.uk/exhibitions/drawing-sculpture. I enjoyed it: much of what was said was what I know through my own practice – drawing as betweenness, improvisation, meditative, time consuming, a way of avoiding doing something else, a proposition ….
Interesting to me in particular was David Batchelors introduction which I caught the end of as I was late (blame the Satnav). Anyhow he was talking of drawing as desegno being historically the “serious, intellectual” aspect of drawing done by men and frivolous, colouring-in as being practised by women. This linked nicely to Tania Kovat’s description of some aspects of her work as “copying” – Retracing what is already there, noticing it and bringing it to light. As Joanna said this morning, this notion of working and valuing what is there relates very much to the way that we work within DAD (www.dadonline.eu) and to our relationship to Dover and its existing assets. Is this a particularly female way of working? Or not? Does it matter? How is this valued compared to huge infrastructure projects aimed at changing everything and making it better (supposedly)?
So it was interesting in this context to see Batchelor’s “coloured-in” drawings (crossing the “gender barrier”) and Tania Kovat’s woodgrain drawings which retrace/redraw the ringlines of the tree (staying in it). Anyhow, I will soon get in a muddle if I put everything under the gender magnifying glass as it is incredibly and unedifyingly reductionist if taken too far.
