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.

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.

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?

Sunday 4 March 2012

Work at Kensington Palace

Images of work in progress at Kensington Palace on the Kensington's flickr site :-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53589066@N03/sets/72157626929559302/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53589066@N03/sets/72157626929559302/detail/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53589066@N03/with/5817938201/

Images are related to a workshop delivered in summer 2011 'Drawing the Dress Collection' and forthcoming exhibition 'Hidden Drawers' to open there summer 2012.

Thursday 22 July 2010

Delicate values




“ The hand touches more delicately in Drawing. There is less between the hand and the image than in any other media. Drawing is fine and concise; Drawing is graceful. Think of them as spaces. These are my drawings." (Brice Marden , Statement 1979, in Brice Marden: Paintings, Drawings and Prints 1975-1980 (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1981): 56

Tuesday 4 May 2010

Sleeping Beauties







Many thanks to Alexandra Kim and her team at Kensington Palace for assiting me with the reearch that has led to this series of drawings derrived from my experiences of viewing items of underwear in the collections.
I wanted to convey the sense of care one has when viewing these artefacts. The images are score into a fine tissue surface coated in wax. In this way the marks are both 'final' ( like a pen an eraser cannot be used) and ephemeral- get too hot through a spotlight or bright sunlight and the marks will melt away, a method which sympathises with the conditions of the artefacts themselves which are kept in carefully regulated environments to preserve and protect them. The ghostly white of the scored lines reinforces this sense of absent/ present existence.