Sixteen well known artists with an East Anglian connection will reveal elements from their creative process that would otherwise remain unseen by the public alongside a finished artwork. The exhibition will provide an invaluable insight into each artist’s working mythology, exposing various clues and elements integral to the creation of a final artwork. This will be presented at The Waterfront Gallery, UCS, Ipswich in Suffolk.
Exhibiting artists are: Glenn Brown | Gillian Carnegie | Ryan Gander | Biggs & Collings | Graham Crowley | Kayle Brandon | Bella Easton | Stephen Felmingham | Chris Hawtin | Julian Perry | Rebecca and Mike | John Stark | Michael Stubbs | Trisant | Daphne Warburg Astor | Richard Wathen
There’s more to an artwork than its finished state, but exhibitions concentrate on that, along perhaps with preparatory studies which act as preliminary versions of that state. Yet there may be any number of by-products from the making of an artwork, and that is what Collateral Drawing explores. These may take such forms as the stage setting, models or constructions which are created in order to facilitate the work itself; the redefinition of past work as collateral to a future work in which it is repurposed; various means of recycling aspects of a practice; or the marks which result – serendipitously, but with a more than accidental logic – from the production itself.
Every artist has their own unique working method that habitually causes repetitive marks to be inflicted onto or altering their working surroundings. Whether dripped, scratched, taped, cut, erased, smeared, hammered: all are repetitive and typically unguarded instances of the process of drawing. The wall, floor or table acts as a raw surface and means to capture these on-going activities that the artist ritualistically performs; the remains of the method left behind is as familiar as it is often taken for granted in an artist’s practice and is rarely publicly exposed. These work surfaces are an integral part and an extension of the drawing process, which are then discarded, or severed from the artwork. They hold a fascination of their own: not just as a documentation of the artist’s creative process, but as an informative insight into the relationship between what is subconscious and conscious in the artist’s drawing practice.
Collateral Drawing East Anglia explores the relationship between finished works and the collateral drawing which fed into or resulted from their making in the work of sixteen artists with an East Anglian connection – Each artist was approached by the curators six months in advance and asked to retain the collateral elements of some new work by isolating or documenting elements of their working environment, as a means to record the artists’ subconscious actions around their day-to-day creativity. These elements were then carefully collated and presented alongside an artwork that the artist produced alongside them during this period.
Collateral Drawing: 4 January – 19 February 2016, Monday – Friday 10 – 5pm and by appointment Artists Talk and Finissage: 17 February Venue Address: The Waterfront Building, UCS, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP4 1QJ