Since 2010, the Drawing Season at the National Art School (NAS) has presented a series of lectures and events focused on pertinent themes in contemporary drawing. The occasion enables dialogue between a diverse range of international and local artists, curators and scholars of drawing. This year’s season, through a series of exhibitions and forums, will explore the theme of ‘place’.
To draw is to think and act within a specific space, be it the place of making, the social environment of the drawing, or the place that the actual drawing exists in. On one hand, the ways that both physical and cyber–space act as vehicles for drawing, facilitate drawings which occupy specific sites. On the other, particular places often act as sources or originators of ideas and images.
The natural force of the wind could lead participants to unexpected places in UK-based artist, Tim Knowles’ ambitious project, The Mass Windwalk. Starting in Darlinghurst’s Taylor Square, Knowles will map more than one hundred community members’ wind directed walks, in live screen-based drawings. Simultaneously, the Wind Grid, an overhead grid of paper weather vanes, will bring Taylor Square alive with shadows moving with the wind, while nearby in the NAS Gallery, Knowles’ Windlab, will be on exhibition – all presented in association with the City of Sydney.
While Knowles invites surprises in real time and actual space, The Island of Drawing is a collaborative project between artist Jeanne Verdoux, living in New York, and The Study Centre for Drawing at the NAS in Sydney. During September, it will create a virtual graphic connection between two islands: New York and Australia. The concept is of a digital ‘cadavre exquis’. Verdoux , together with NAS students and lecturers, will generate a massive collaborative drawing on a page linked to the NAS website.
In The Study Centre for Drawing Joe Frost has curated two study events about drawing as a way of entering places that are new or foreign. The first event, Tilt, will show work from Sydney artist, Lynne Eastaway’s recent residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris and Charles Cooper’s 2012 residency at the British School of Rome. The second will be a broader survey of works from other residencies.
Also, until September the second, Placed, at Articulate Project Space in Leichhardt, explores relationships between drawing and physical space through installation and site specific drawing. Generating dialogue between two cities, Melbourne-based artists Andrea Baxter and Therese Keogh and Sydney-based artists use drawing as a vehicle for social engagement, weather-charting, the bridging of islands.
The National Art School
August 30 to October 13, 2012
Sydney
The Drawing Season is presented across various times and locations.
NAS Gallery
Monday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm
The Study Centre
Wednesday to Friday, 12.30pm to 1.30pm
Visit the NAS website for full details of opening hours and venues location of the various Drawing Season projects.
www.nas.edu.au
Tim Knowles, Windwalk Charing Cross, 2008, photograph
Charles Cooper, Excavation, 2012, basalt and acrylic painted clay, 15 x 120 x 143cm
Courtesy the artists