This blog tracks the development of a drawing research project which explores relaltionships between activities of drawing and those other professional practices. It focuses on interrogating shared interdiciplinary enagagement with notions of ‘delicacy’ and aims to use this information to devlop and raise awareness of new studio methods. This site aims to make visible studio activities to share this methodology and open it to critical debate.
I have begun exploring a new strand of though developped as a tangent from investigations into light and revelation. I started to think more inensly about the power of light to reveal, and its concerse : darkness. As a result, a new seed of ideas has begun to emerge around ideas of nightime: a private time, the absence of light, shadows, the uncertainty of darkeness. The inability to make sense of or grasp fleeting impressions has been foregrounded here. Like these impressions, the drawing change as the ink dries, never fixed, the desired effects slipping away ( captured only in reproduction) fading to a feint blur, like a disappointing awakening from sleep.
About the project:
The project seeks to examine relationships between investigative procedures in sciences of conservation, archaeology and medicine and the experimental tools and ideas of Art. It centres on the exploratory and analytical activity of drawing, where overlapping concerns can be found, specifically in the researcher’s shared engagement with fugitive or delicate material. The project responds to recent concerns voiced over the introspective character of much contemporary drawing research (Garner 2008) and its interdisciplinary approach falls in stark opposition to the conventional understanding of drawing as a secretive, private, studio-centred dialogue between artist and page. Rather than simply asking that increasingly hackneyed question: “what is drawing?”, it interrogates the activities of researchers who share values with a particular form of studio practice (one concerned with damage, contact, delicacy, sensitivity, traces) to ask “what might drawing share?”. The development of forms of documentation which are rare, yet necessary, to enable critical debate (through raising awareness of studio decision-making in relation to the processes of other fields), aims to test a transferable model for cross-discipline knowledge exchange.
Research Questions:
How might technologies, protocol, methods of handling borrowed from these scientific disciplines be translated into studio processes to result in new and innovative methods of drawing to articulate ideas of the delicate?
Can these methods and resultant images make visible otherwise hidden interdisciplinary connections?
Can this approach to studio practice be documented in such a way to develop and communicate a transferable model for interdisciplinary studio practice?
Garner, S. ‘Towards a Critical Discourse in Drawing Research’ in S. Garner (ed.) Writing On Drawing: Essays on Drawing Practice and Research, Bristol: Intellect, 2008, pp 15- 26.
The Patina Series
Drawing made using processes of magnification using grease on light sensitive paper.
This work is the culmination of a series of experiments which explore the conventions around preservation in costumes archives. Ultimately conservators seek to prevent damage to the garments through marking. In this series I explore the idea that drawing is essentially a process of marking: processes of protection are inverted and actively used as a drawing tool. Here small deposits of grease are meaured out , tracking the outline of a garment. Using processes of maginfication by light ( borrowed from medical methods) , the image has been enlarged.
