RESEARCH EVENTS
DRAWING: Transformative Matter - Material Trace
Collective and individual activities undertaken by the group expands current AUB research interests which connect the practice of drawing to: states of flux and real time events; site specificity and bound and unbound spaces; light and the ephemeral; tensions between processes of change and structural stability; repetition, revision and deletion.
Research Group Meetings at Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford Led by Chris Dorsett, Research Associate at PRM
The group discussed key themes of potential enquiry related to objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum. Associations were made between museum objects, their stories and histories and academic writings about these. Ideas were then explored through our drawn responses to a series of linked prompts
Research AUB Drawing Research Group at The Garage, Center for Hindu Studies, Oxford.
Drawing Research Group members, Chris Dorsett and other researchers from Pitt Rivers Museum, have been working collaboratively and individually at the former Belsyre Garage, Centre of Hindu Studies, Oxford. The space is temporarily housing an extensive Tagore Archive. This has been used both as a studio and temporary pop-up exhibition space.
Below are examples of member’s engagement with this ongoing, open-ended project:
This work has developed through visits to Belsyre Garage and Pitt Rivers Museum. What was particularly curious to me at the garage was the remaining traces of past activity and their possible meaning, lost by time, alongside the shredding of importance. Whereas at the Pitt Rivers, time past is held in reverence, with the upmost care taken to protect and hold, suspend meaning between the past and now.
This led me to make work that has taken slow time to make with repetitive stitches that bind layers of time whilst at the same time, loosening threads that pull away, suspended, suggesting the notion of impermanence and changing landscapes, once the human stamp of order and function slips into shadow, nature, wind, sun, air, earth, rain gradually reclaims its own print.
Fran Quinlan
I used drawing to record and respond to accidental and incidental marks found in the garage, as though these were a language whose meaning had been lost. I traced and pressed oil stains onto paper, joined dots in the cement and drew on these with water to make a topography of the garage floor, and took impressions of the garage’s signage and surfaces using car oil on tissue paper. The garage became the subject, the material and the frame of the drawings and I furthered my investigations into drawings that seem to emerge and disappear.
Justine Moss
I have been accompanied on my Belsyre trips by the DRTs, the Dreaming Robot Tortoises, who have been observing the site and integrating themselves among the work and those at work. Some labelling has taken place too, documenting phenomena I have encountered and reflecting on potential histories. I would like to work further in the space with the DRTs using paper casting to explore trace and integration ideas.
Denise Poote
Film on vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/928373221?share=copy
I explored the concept of ‘framing’ by altering the physical surroundings in which the drawings are placed. I removed drawings from the sketchbook and photographed them in the setting of Belsyre Garage. In this space, the drawings were positioned on walls, office chairs, sculptures, and next to cleaning brushes and other objects found there.
While photographing the drawings in the Belsyre Garage setting, I thought of relationship between the drawing and the photograph and how it relates to Philip Rawson’s ideas on the interplay between these two mediums.
Some drawings incorporate barcodes copied randomly from domestic products, engaging with the concept of false identification and classification.
Ilona Skladzien
A three day workshop led by DRG Claire Baskerville at Belsyre Garage, Centre of Hindu Studies, Oxford.
A three day workshop at the Belsyre Garage, led by Claire Baskerville, brought together both participants and the varied sources informing our collaboration. Twelve members worked on site, engaging with the space through open and responsive practices. With generous support from Chris Dorsett, this period of shared inquiry and dialogue marked a significant stage in the development of the project.
Ichiro Sugimoto at Center for Hindu Studies, Oxford
Working in collaboration with Professor Siân Bowen, Honoury Research Associate, Kew and Resident Artist at the Economic Botany Collection, Ichiro Sugimoto conducted talks and workshops with members of the Drawing Research Group. Sharing his extensive research on ecology approaches to growing and dyeing with the ancient plant of akane, a traditional silk braiding and dyeing workshop was undertaken at the Center for Hindu Studies, Oxford.
