portal for creative expression
What is the difference between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ vision? I want to reduce drawing – at least for a while – to a minimal practice whereby I explore modes of perception. My aim is to examine my intuition and instincts with and without sight.
Art Night in London has an impressive programme of events and exhibits including an outdoor public commission by Barbara Kruger, a bingo and live-music night in Walthamstow social club by Oscar Murillo, a virtual reality piece by Marina Abramovic and a late night Gagosian gallery opening with work by Michael Craig-Martin. My friend Libby Heaney is exhibiting her work Top of the Bots at The Star of Kings, a pub on York Way, Kings Cross, which has a vibrant young creative vibe.
Drawing sound is an act of performance and my recent works have explored the fundamental components of the act of improvisational drawing – particularly the tension between failure and resolution, and the balance between control and surrender. My works examine the cognitive processes that underlie our emotional relationship with Art.
Today I am participating in the performance with Shaun Caton – a performance artist who mostly works with painting and also creates performance-based, visual moving environments using light, shadows and painted cut-out characters that create scenes. Mixing painting and performance I am happy to get to know him and his work better. Looking at his website, he has a highly developed style, which I love.
I have finished the sketchbook inspired by the British painter Frank Auerbach, whose work has been showing the Alma Zevi gallery along the street from me. Like him, I have quickly sketched the scene outside my studio repetitively over a series of days as a means to get more connected with the subject. Perhaps I will turn these drawings into a painting.
The Swiss pavilion presents a video-art dance protest. The piece draws from queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz statement “the now is a prison house. Backward is the new forward or the other way around”. The work which is titled Moving Backwards is by Pauline Voundry and Renate Lorenz with 5 choreographers/performers: Julie Cunningham, Werner Hirsch, Latifa Laâbissi, Marbles Jumbo Radio, and Nach.
Hector draws circles in a very ritualistic manner and the black charcoal that he crunches in his mouth drips. It seems at once Medieval and futuristic. his performances, as he describes them, mediate movement, endurance, and ritualistic processes.
The main motifs for this exhibition are the circle and downward linear gesture. I call them breath drawings. The idea was to translate architectural structures – line, form, and symmetry, found in the distinct cities of New York, Venice, and London – the places I have been living and working between over the past five years.