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Drawing is a verb. Drawing is a noun. The square root of drawing. Getting on mother's nerves- psycholical drama in contemporay drawing
A resurgence of drawing, evident since the mid-to-late '90s, may account for the coincidence of three major drawing exhibitions in Dublin during the later stages of 2006: Drawing is a verb . Drawing is a noun , at the Stone Gallery, 28 September to 20 November; The Square root of drawing , at Temple Bar Gallery, 24 October to December 2; and Getting on mother's nerves - psychological drama in contemporary drawing , at Mother's Tankstation, 18 October to 23 December. Internationally, this resurgence is evident in the increased profile of drawings in biennials, art fairs and exhibitions, and a number of very beautiful survey publications in the last five years, and nationally in a range of exhibitions, symposia and publications since 1996. It is also evident in the number of artists, nationally and internationally, for whom drawing is their principle medium. The fundamental importance and appeal of drawing may be argued to be threefold. Firstly, drawing 'belongs to everyone'. We draw incessantly as children and doodle as distracted adults. The reach of drawing, its meaning and relevance, go far beyond the confines of art. As Emma Dexter suggests, "drawing is part of our interrelation to our physical environment, recording in and on it, the presence of the human." [1] Secondly, within the confines of art, drawing has traditionally been central to the training and practice of both painters and sculptors, although this led to its being regarded as a secondary practice during much of art's history. Finally, as Michael Craig-Martin suggests and regardless of apparent marginality or subservience, characteristics inherent in drawings from across the ages are amongst those most highly valued in contemporary practice, including "spontaneity, creative speculation, experimentation, directness, simplicity, abbreviation, expressiveness, immediacy, personal vision, technical diversity, modesty of means, rawness, fragmentation, discontinuity, unfinishedness, and open-endedness." [2] The title of the exhibition at the Stone Gallery, Drawing is a verb . Drawing is a noun . invokes two aspects of contemporary drawing. The first is process-oriented, reflecting upon the nature of drawing; the second may be described (loosely) as narrative-led, associative and descriptive. If Richard Serra's observation that "drawing is a verb" [3] has inspired much drawing practice and criticism, Laura Hoptman suggests that the recent resurgence of drawing has included a re-assertion of drawing as a noun. [4] The exhibition thus seeks to reflect the breadth of contemporary drawing practice. The first drawing encountered in the exhibition, a site-specific drawing by Gerda Teljeur on the glass of the entrance, is a delicate example of drawing as a verb. A criss-cross web of fine lines delicately interrupts and re-frames our view of the gallery space and of the boundary between it and the street. Maria McKinney's The Recreation of Adam , created from selected parts of a 1000-piece jigsaw of Leonardo's painting, might also be described as 'process-oriented' in its testing of the limits of representation. The severed 'male ends' of a jigsaw puzzle, fixed in place, draw attention to the form of the jigsaw and allow the image of God's creation of Adam to be discerned - an exploration of presence and absence in both the making and reading of a drawing. Kate Betts' Blue tit's wings and bouquet is a beautifully rendered instance of 'Drawing is a noun'. A richly rendered wing echoes the form of the foliage on which it is suspended, invoking Daphne's mythic transformation. Emma Smith's Telegraph Magazine 27th May 2006 , drawn from a collage of landscape images featured in that publication, invites reflection upon ideas of landscape and the narratives they support. Iona Madden's Nose drawing has a photographic quality in some of its detail, that is then transformed by lines that bleed away and begin to take on a life of their own. The Square root of drawing is also a survey show, seeking to "present new directions in contemporary drawing." Rather than invoking recent discourses around drawing, the curation centred on the place of drawing within contemporary art practices, focusing on: "firstly, observing drawing as a primary practice, secondly investigating its elemental place within artists' wider practice and lastly exploring drawing as a method of achieving final works in other media such as painting or sculpture". [5] Over ninety Irish and international invited artists were given a brief to produce a new drawing measuring 12" x 12" (30.5 x 30.5 cm) square, although the conceptual framework offered for their submissions may have differed slightly to that cited in publicity: "In the beginning was the line; Displaying the thought process; The emergence of the 'new' drawing." The first of these strands was picked up by Catherine de Zegher in a recent symposium relating to the exhibition, Drawing now ? The third, in its emphasis upon drawing "both as an egalitarian method of expression and a readily accessible art practice" [6] reflects the strong presence within the show of self-consciously illustrative and decorative work. During much of the twentieth century, both the decorative and the illustrative were considered to be "synonymous with all that was superficial, unsophisticated and popular, in the word's most pejorative sense". [7] More recently, such vernacular styles have been widely adopted, often as a means of exploring cultural traditions and assumptions. In the work of Jemima Brown, for example, a highly decorative black-on-pink drawing, Give me your blacklisted (wall paper detail) , interrogates the real and surreal narratives of the McCarthy era. Michael Paré's Mantra explores popular idealisms, drawing on popular culture - in its invocation, "what makes you happy makes you a better person," and in its imagery. Bea McMahon's take on contemporary culture is playful but nonetheless interrogatory for that; Modular man may be a curious cartoon superhero or a reductively deformed aggressor. By contrast, the humour of Graham Parker's Untitled is cool and detached, employing a drawing style that echoes the language of architectural illustration and interrogating "the power relationships within designed structures". [8] Björn Hegardt also draws upon architecture; A Dream woke me is a finely rendered aerial view of a dense, high-rise conurbation. The dream may have been threatening - a terrorist attack or the crumbling of a utopian fantasy - or it may have been visionary.
This account of the exhibition presents a thin slice - there were many strong works that were 'process-oriented', some lively and entertaining animations, and a curiously poignant short film by Jaki Irvine. The challenge posed by such a large exhibition is not unlike that faced in assembling a survey of drawing. As Tania Kovats observes, "To create a context for drawing is to accept standing before an avalanche and knowing you only have a small box to put your rock samples in." [9] Both survey shows grapple with this and fitted as much into their box as they could. Clever hanging gave shape to the overall impact of the exhibition at the Temple Bar Gallery but, as happens with survey shows, the abundance and diversity of work creates a difficult context for attending to the particularities of each. Getting on Mother's Nerves - psychological drama in contemporary drawing both is and, crucially, is not a drawing show. All of the works included in the exhibition are presented as drawings but the exhibition was not about drawing. Instead, modern and contemporary drawing practices, in which 'drawing is a noun', are used to explore the curators' fascination with "a hovering malevolence." [10] Interestingly, the coherence of the exhibition's focus allows the diversity of practices to breathe -both to play off one another and to hold their own. The potential for fruitful freeassociation thus afforded the drawings is reflected in the contemporary work chosen to frame the exhibition, a selection of zines by Raymond Pettibon, and in the hanging of the exhibition - salon style, on a single wall. Seen together as a large group the drawings speak in concert but with the possibility for different narrative strains to emerge depending upon the viewer and the moment. Gary Coyle's images have a strong presence, from the dense impenetrability of his criminal forest to the clamouring mouths of Pornotopia - crowded tales of ecstasy and seduction or, in the absence of the title, an endless distraction of chatter. By contrast, the humour and perversity of Marcel Dzama's Untitled [cat riding elephant] unfolds quietly, a twist on happy families. Subversion ismulti-layered in Jennifer Mills' Adam West III . An exquisitely rendered monkey is roughly clad in oil pastel as a masked avenger, and then named after the actor who played the part; identities are collapsed as are high and low art, the professional and the childlike. The simplicity of rendering and almost cruel humour of Atsushi Kaga's drawings compels attention, while the faded effect of Noel McKenna's watercolours wryly echoes the once energetic aspirations of the businesses they record - the mouth of a giant whale serves as entrance to a marine park and a monumental chicken is advertisement. Occasionally malevolent, the visions conjured by this exhibition determinedly resist utopian impulses. The success of Getting on mother's nerves reveals, for me, the difficulty posed by survey shows. There are two reasons why the former worked particularly well: conceptual coherence and, not being a survey show, it assumes that there is more to follow. With endless stories to be told, we look forward to the next rather than mourning absences. To work, a survey show requires the imposition of a strong curatorial narrative, which risks fetishising categories and cornering works. The remaining difficulty is that by its nature, a survey show tends to imply that the story is now told.
1 Emma Dexter, 'Introduction', Vitamin D, London and New York: Phaidon Press Ltd, 2005, p 6 2 Michael Craig-Martin, Drawing the line, reappraising drawing past and present, London: The South Bank Centre, 1995, pp 9 -10 3 Richard Serra, quoted in Lizzie Borden, 'About drawing: an interview', 1977, in Richard Serra: writings, interviews, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994, p 51 4 Laura Hoptman,'Introduction: drawing is a noun', in Drawing now: eight propositions, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p 12 5 Press release, The Square root of drawing, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios 6 From information given to the artists who participated in the show 7 Laura Hoptman, 'ornament and crime: toward decoration', in Drawing now: eight propositions, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p 31 8 From the DVD catalogue that accompanied the exhibition 9 Tania Kovats, 'Traces of thought and intimacy', in T. Kovats (ed.), The Drawing book: a survey of drawing, the primary means of expression, London: Black Dog, 2005, p 11 10 from the press release for Getting on mother's nerves Siún Hanrahan is an artist and writer, and research coordinator at the School of Art, Design and Printing at the Dublin Institute of Technology. Reprinted from Circa 119, Spring Issue 2007, pp. 62 - 65 [300]
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