'Contemporary Australian Drawing' at Langford 120

On Saturday, August 11 we went to the Melbourne opening of Contemporary Australian Drawing: drawing as notation, text and discovery at Langford 120 Gallery. For Curator Dr. Irene Barberis, the exhibition’s original raison d'etre was to correspond with the Drawing Out conference at the University of the Arts, London in March, 2012 (see Blog Post Thursday, March 15) where the Palgrave Macmillan book Contemporary Australian Drawing #1 by Janet McKenzie was also first launched. 

For most of the 87 artists, this may be our only chance to see the exhibition. It seems to be taking on a life of its own, with plans for it to travel to the USA, Asia and Europe (dates and venues TBC.)

Langford 120
120 Langford Street
North Melbourne, 
Victoria 3051
Telephone: +61 3 9328 8558
Email: langford120@gmail.com
Hours: Wednesday - Saturday: 11 am - 5pm; Sunday: 12 noon - 5pm

The exhibition runs until September 2. 

Pictured below are some installation views:

    Above, second from right: Christopher Heathcote, who wrote the Introduction to Contemporary Australian Drawing #1

From left: drawings by Shane Jones, Deborah Klein, Tom Alberts, Godwin Bradbeer, Michael Esson and Euan Heng.
The 'masking tape' at the corners of Jones's image is a convincing example of trompe l'oeil.

Lost in Translation

Pictured above: Tattooed Texts, 2012, pencil, 35 x 25 cm. Photograph by Tim Gresham

Pictured above is a recently completed work that will shortly be heading for London. It is one of eighty-seven drawings by Australian artists that have been included in the forthcoming exhibition Contemporary Australian Drawing 2: Drawing as notation, text and discovery. The show will run from 23 March – 5 April. It is timed to coincide with the Drawing Out conference at the University of the Arts, London, on 28-30 March 2012.

Curator Dr. Irene Barberis invited artists to respond to either (or both) of these assertions from writers Michel Butor and Serge Tisseron: 

All writing is drawing; and

The space of writing: what does this mean?

My drawing is a response to the first quote.

The image evolved in part from the tattooed women who debuted in my work in the mid 1990s, and have recently made a comeback in the current fairground imagery. An equally significant point of departure for the composition was Man Ray’s iconic Rayograph Le Violin d’Ingres, 1924 (see photograph below, right hand side).

Individual texts are inscribed on the subject’s back in a multitude of languages, including German, Chinese, Welsh, Celtic, Russian, Urdu, Arabic and Japanese. They each denote a common tattoo motif, for example, a rose, a dragonfly, a spider in a web, an eagle, a tiger, barbed wire, an anchor and a sailing ship. In their original pictorial form they would have encompassed a collection of graphic, instantly recognizable images that could be universally read. Now, unless the viewer is prodigiously multi-lingual, most, if not all, are lost in translation.

Pictured above: finished work surrounded by assorted reference materials 

and preparatory drawings