During their making you can
see the strength of the relationship that exists between writing and drawing
through the ease with which a trained hand will freely move between the two.
That is, I suspect, because both are part of our literacy, both are tools of
representation and both designed as methods of managing multidimensional
matter. What separate them are alphabets, dictionaries and the way they are
read.Stephen Farthing, 26 June 2013
Last Saturday afternoon Shane and I attended the opening of a superb exhibition by painters Craig Gough and Wendy Stavrianos at Langford 120 gallery.
It was also the occasion for the Australian launch of the drawn word. The publication's primary aim
is to delineate the relationship between writing and drawing, expanding upon ideas
originally presented at the third Drawing
Out conference, University of the Arts, London in 2012. It is divided into key sections:
Definition, Transmission, Application and Representation. My drawing Tattooed Text, 2012 is one of the
illustrations that responds to the fifth and final chapter, All Writing is Drawing by Irene
Barberis and Janet McKenzie. The artist statement that originally accompanied my drawing is quoted in the book. To read it, click HERE.
the drawn word was edited by Professor Stephen Farthing, RA and Dr Janet McKenzie and is published by Studio International and The Studio Trust, New York, NY, USA (2014).
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| Image left: Deborah Klein, Tattooed Texts, 2012, pencil; image right: Marian Leven: The Space of Writing, what is that? 2012, watercolour |
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| Dr Irene Barberis. In the background to her right (in blue sweater) is Craig Gough. The painting far right is by Craig. |
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| Background: Painting by Craig Gough; foreground: Cresside Collette and Shane Jones |