"This group exhibition exploring drawing includes new and site-specific work by three Irish and three Dutch artists curated by Dutch artist and curator Arno Kramer. Drawing is a speculative and exploratory process, and many contemporary artists are testing what the parameters of a drawing can be. Charcoal, pencil and ink have been supplemented with materials such as wire, tape, wood and steel. Artists are experimenting with materials such as smoke, water, light and air, and methods of presentation such as installation and film."
This exhibition captures a moment in contemporary drawing practices, it invites the viewer to viscerally engage with drawing through an expanded field which opens up new possibilities. Several of the works are site specific and constructed on site over time and in relation to the physical building, all are experimental and explorative, while holding an authenticity and sensitivity to the core of drawing practice.
This approach to drawing lies at the heart of the practice of each artist selected for Beyond Drawing - three artists from Ireland and three from The Netherlands – by curator Arno Kramer.
Based on diagrams of wind speed and direction called hodographs, Felicity Clear’s large scale, site specific Hodograph drawing is made from elastic and paper tape, where light and shadow become part of the spatial drawing to skew perspectives and challenge perception.
In her work, Marleen Kappe explores the borders between drawing and installation presenting partially abstract worlds referring to artificial urban landscapes. Her mixed media work Drifting Fragments comprises architectural elements which start as two-dimensional drawings on the wall and transform into three-dimensional shapes on the floor.
Romy Muijrers drawings are about time, each line drawn or erased in their making becomes part of the work. She tries to represent feelings of longing or loss, a fleeting encounter or attraction and repulsion through figurative and abstract forms in a space, a landscape or a construction.
Kiera O’Toole’s recent weaved drawings comprise hand cut strips of layered graphite, varnish and acrylic on paper, woven into objects which are site specific, in that they attempt to create a ‘holding space’ where the viewer’s awareness of their felt bodily experience in the presence of the drawing unfolds, as the drawing affects the viewer.
Marisa Rappard’s large-scale drawing Body by Proxy, combines abstract and figurative elements, an overlapping montage of shadow figures, silhouettes, body parts and architectural perspectives reflecting the alienating effect of technology and the endless stream of information technology brings.
In her drawings and paintings, Mary-Ruth Walsh has created a language of seductive surfaces. The works appear like imagined architectural proposals displayed in such a way as to create a double take with the viewer. They highlight the artists’ interest in the relationship between permanence and impermanence and the Anthropocene.
Text from Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre, Ireland and Drawing deCentered
www.westcorkartscentre.com/beyond-drawing
This exhibition captures a moment in contemporary drawing practices, it invites the viewer to viscerally engage with drawing through an expanded field which opens up new possibilities. Several of the works are site specific and constructed on site over time and in relation to the physical building, all are experimental and explorative, while holding an authenticity and sensitivity to the core of drawing practice.
This approach to drawing lies at the heart of the practice of each artist selected for Beyond Drawing - three artists from Ireland and three from The Netherlands – by curator Arno Kramer.
Based on diagrams of wind speed and direction called hodographs, Felicity Clear’s large scale, site specific Hodograph drawing is made from elastic and paper tape, where light and shadow become part of the spatial drawing to skew perspectives and challenge perception.
In her work, Marleen Kappe explores the borders between drawing and installation presenting partially abstract worlds referring to artificial urban landscapes. Her mixed media work Drifting Fragments comprises architectural elements which start as two-dimensional drawings on the wall and transform into three-dimensional shapes on the floor.
Romy Muijrers drawings are about time, each line drawn or erased in their making becomes part of the work. She tries to represent feelings of longing or loss, a fleeting encounter or attraction and repulsion through figurative and abstract forms in a space, a landscape or a construction.
Kiera O’Toole’s recent weaved drawings comprise hand cut strips of layered graphite, varnish and acrylic on paper, woven into objects which are site specific, in that they attempt to create a ‘holding space’ where the viewer’s awareness of their felt bodily experience in the presence of the drawing unfolds, as the drawing affects the viewer.
Marisa Rappard’s large-scale drawing Body by Proxy, combines abstract and figurative elements, an overlapping montage of shadow figures, silhouettes, body parts and architectural perspectives reflecting the alienating effect of technology and the endless stream of information technology brings.
In her drawings and paintings, Mary-Ruth Walsh has created a language of seductive surfaces. The works appear like imagined architectural proposals displayed in such a way as to create a double take with the viewer. They highlight the artists’ interest in the relationship between permanence and impermanence and the Anthropocene.
Text from Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre, Ireland and Drawing deCentered
www.westcorkartscentre.com/beyond-drawing
Beyond Drawing
CURATED BY ARNO KRAMER
Ballina Arts Centre, 2020
FELICITY CLEAR, MARLEEN KAPPE, ROMY MUIJRERS, KIERA O'TOOLE, MARISA RAPPARD,
MARY-RUTH WALSH
|
|
B E Y O N D D R A W I N G
Arno Kramer
"In 2016 I was invited by Visual Artists Ireland to do a peer critique in Dublin and at that time there were six Irish artists selected for me to work with for one day and to talk about their represented drawings. The connection between the six artists was so good that they have started a cooperation called Drawing DeCentred as new initiative. When I was thinking about the idea of Beyond Drawing, looking for ‘borders’ in drawing, I immediately thought of DrawingDeCentred,our good contact and maybe more important their good works. I have asked all six artists to come with a proposal for Beyond Drawing and finally choose Felicity Clear, Mary-Ruth Walsh and Kiera O’Toole. I did have already three Dutch artists in my mind, Marisa Rappard, Marleen Kappe and Romy Muijrers, and this is finally Beyond Drawing. The exhibition will also travel to Uillinn West Cork arts Centre in July this year...
...However it is still normal to say that the line makes the drawing, it is obvious that in these days there is happening a lot more than making just drawings on paper with classical materials like charcoal, pencil and ink. At this very moment you can see that there is a huge necessity for artists to find out what the borders of drawing can be. First for example by working with different materials, even with smoke on paper, no rectangle form of the paper, but also in the way of presentation. The drawing or the way of drawing is more used as tools to make what you can call an installation. Sometimes indeed with the linear aspect of a drawing as a starting point. Question is: can you speak of three-dimensional drawings? And what is a three-dimensional drawing?
Artists are working in their own visual language and technic, but they use that free and very emphatically. Charcoal, pencil and ink have been supplemented with other materials like iron wire, tape, wood and even photography, which means that drawings move up in the direction of sculpture. Is it getting a sculpture? And why would you choose such a way of working? Is it the best way to express yourself? Or is it a new direction in finding out if beauty is the mean thing?
Every artist chosen for Beyond Drawing did find a very outspoken way of working. For my as curator of this show the original quality of work is the key point to make choices for artists. Authenticity, sensitivity, craftsmanship are also very important to convince the choice of these six artists...
...Kiera O’Toole is always searching for the best way and place to make her work and to present her work. She works in her studio but also in the country, uses white crayon to make pattrens, on stones, on walls. The final result can be a video. Her studio work is strong. Surface forms the starting point for her drawing practice. The scale, texture and structure of a surface forms and informs the drawing. In this work, the perception of 23 drawings, some are 10 years old, are interrupted by cutting up and individually weaving and collating them together to shape a larger drawing. Using conventional drawing materials as graphite, charcoal and ink on paper, the drawing(s) evoke assemblage art rather than a traditional 2D drawing. Taking an intuitive and non-craft like approach to weaving, the drawing(s) retain a sense of the hand(made) and extend into three dimension. This approach calls attention to the significance of the drawing surface.
...So here in all these works is an appeal to our illusion, to our imagination, and perhaps we can blend into the surreal world that is being sketched. Openings enough, images enough. Meetings on different levels are near I assumed. These are encounters at different levels and ways. We see each other, talk to each other, we look at works, compare works, enjoy these works hopefully. it. There are always encounters, other encounters. The meeting was also delicate, namely with our first visual touch of materials, and the artist who has felt the material before and moved with it. Meetings again. With every glance, with every touch. Our gaze meets another, meets these artworks, meets the landscape, a skyline or the clouds. A hand moves and touches another hand, a hand draws, may later touch a glass, a flower or a letter. Somewhere a pen passes over the paper, someone draws with charcoal, scratches, polishes and erases. The artwork is progressing, the material is calling, the form is screaming, an image is created, mysterious, fragile, unruly, sensitive, clear. Everything is constantly moving in our mind and in our feelings. The artists have sometimes completed hundreds of encounters on paper, on wood, on metal. Small touches, sometimes even violent touches, or sensitive touches, but always animated and charged.
In the poem Human Chain, Seamus Heaney writes in the last sentences:
A letting go which will not come again
Or it will, once. And for all.
You can say that the participating artists here have done it: a letting go. I will hope that it will come again. It will already in Skibbereen.
Indeed for all.
Arno Kramer
B E Y O N D D R A W I N G
Arno Kramer
However it is still normal to say that the line makes the drawing, it is obvious that in these days there is happening a lot more than making just drawings on paper with classical materials like charcoal, pencil and ink. At this very moment you can see that there is a huge necessity for artists to find out what the borders of a drawing can be. First for example by working with different materials, even smoke, water, air, no rectangle form of the paper, but also in the way of presentation. The drawing or the way of drawing is more used as tools to make what you can call an installation. Sometimes indeed with the linear aspect of a drawing as a starting point. Question is: can you speak of three-dimensional drawings? And what is a three-dimensional drawing?
Artists are working in their own visual language and technic, but they use that free and very emphatically. Charcoal, pencil and ink have been supplemented with other materials like iron wire, tape, wood and even photography, which means that drawings move up in the direction of sculpture. Is it getting a sculpture? And why would you choose such a way of working? Is it the best way to express yourself? Or is it a new direction in finding out if beauty is the mean thing?
Every artist chosen for Beyond Drawing did find a very outspoken way of working. For my as curator of this show the original quality of work is the key point to make choices for artists. Authenticity, sensitivity, craftsmanship are also very important to convince the choice of these six artists.
Indeed mostly starting with an ‘ordinary’ drawing or sketch the work develops in a more three-dimensional direction, because the artist takes risks, would like to find out if there are borders not obstruct for example by the size of the paper. Not even obstruct by any material. Very often is the restriction of the drawing installation the size of the space. Every artwork has something in itself like an own time, suggesting it to us.
Every piece of art is beside that it can keep beauty in itself, call for emotions, tell something about the world around us, of the individual feeling from the maker, also direct and always a reminder.
Arno Kramer 2020
Artists:Felicity Clear (IRL), Marleen Kappe (NL), Romy Muijrers (NL), Marisa Rappard (NL), Kiera O’Toole (IRL), Mary-Ruth Walsh (IRL)
PRESS RELEASE
