the drawn word

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).

Image left: Deborah Klein, Tattooed Texts, 2012, pencil; image right: Marian Leven: The Space of Writing, what is that? 2012, watercolour

Dr Irene Barberis. In the background to her right (in blue sweater) is Craig Gough. The painting far right is by Craig.

Background: Painting by Craig Gough; foreground: Cresside Collette and Shane Jones 

More Tattooed Text

Love Letters, 1997, colour linocut, 46 x 30 cm. 

Collection National Gallery of Australia

Continuing with the subject of Tattooed Women Past and Present, last week I learned from Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax, Curator, Australian Prints & Drawings at the National Gallery of Australia, that she has just curated my linocut Love Letters (1997) into a small works on paper show in the NGA’s Australian Art Galleries. The exhibition is loosely themed around the idea of ‘mail art’. Coincidentally, this image also incorporates text (see previous blog post Lost in Translation). Love Letters is one of the few colour linocuts I’ve made. Its theme is eternal: most of us are fools for love. It seems to me that only one thing has changed. On the evidence of the stamp that partly blinds our love-struck heroine, note how much the cost of postage has risen since 1997.

The exhibition also features work by Mike Parr, Richard Tipping, Eugene Carchesio, Pete Spence, Bob Peacock, Noel Hutchison, Brian Thomson and Ian Milliss. It is scheduled to run for approximately 6 months.

The National Gallery of Australia

Parkes Place

Canberra ACT 2600

General information +61 2 6340 6501

Open Daily 10 am - 5 pm (closed Christmas Day)

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