Line / Extended

17th October 2019 – opening of UHArts Line/Extended show

I attended the opening of Line / Extended, a group show at UHArts gallery. The artists on show were Rosana Antoli, Andrea V. Wright, Jane Grisewood, Lucy Brown and George Eksts. I was interested in this show because I use line, drawing and installation extensively in my practice. The automatic drawing performative piece Blind Lines (Grisewood, 2019) on the opening evening was fascinating look at a sensory approach to drawing. Below are some action documentary photographs I took for my research during the opening and some afterwards.

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I was drawn to the work of Grisewood and Wright. Grisewood said in an article in Traction Magazine [Available online] that within her methodology she adopts a ‘loose scientific methodology that operates between structure and unpredictability'(Pentelow, 2019)1. She goes on to explain and I paraphrase here, that making the work through doing, performance means the idea becomes the artwork.

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Andrea V. Wright’s work was interesting, but for me, in a different way. Her piece, also site specific, Vertical Ascension (2016-19) made of wood, cloth and tape extended into the space and across the gallery wall. I have experience making installations, so was interested in her fixed wooden structures and how they held their presence in this vast gallery space successfully. Like myself, she spent some time away from the art world and re-established herself in 2010. Using a mixture of found material, her practice methodology is not purely conceptually based but is led by the materials which are ‘manipulated whilst weighing up the juxtapositions these material describe/allude to when placed together.’2 (Royal Society of Sculptors website, 2019). There is an immediacy to these resulting drawn and sculptural installations.

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Upon reflection I would like to use a performative element to my practice. Researching this extension of drawing as a result of seeing Grisewood and Wright, this show has informed me greater as to how I could include this within my practice, probably not in the studio, but as more of a happening either live or through the medium of film possibly somewhere site specific within the wider university.

1 Pentelow, S (2019) Interview with Jane Grisewood [Online]. Available from:https://tractionmagazine.co.uk/post/80060545141/027-jane-grisewood [Accessed: 5/12/2019]

2 Royal Society of Sculptors(2019) Andrea V Wright [Online]. Available from:https://sculptors.org.uk/artists/andrea-v-wright [Accessed: 5/12/2019]

Fig 1: Jane Grisewood performing Blind Lines UHArts Gallery 17th October 2019 awaiting permission of artist photographed by Culverhouse, T 2019

Fig 2: Jane Grisewood performing Blind Lines UHArts Gallery 17th October 2019 awaiting permission of artist photographed by Culverhouse, T (2019) GRISEWOOD, J. (2017) Blind Lines. [UHArts Gallery, 17 October 2019]

Fig 3: Wright, A, V (2019) Vertical Ascension 2016-19, Steel, Wood, Tape, Pigment and Rubber photographed by Culverhouse, T 2019