COLLATERAL DRAWING BERLIN

September 28 – October 17 2015

Curator: Bella Easton and Paul Carey-Kent

There’s more to an artwork than its finished state, but exhibitions concentrate on that, along perhaps with preparatory studies which act as preliminary versions of that state. Yet there may be any number of bi-products from the making of an artwork, and that is what Collateral Drawing explores. That may take such forms as the stage setting, models or constructions which are created in order to facilitate the work itself; the redefinition of past work as collateral to a future work in which it is repurposed; various means of recycling aspects of a practice; or the marks which result – serendipitously, but with a more than accidental logic – from the production itself.

Every artist has their own unique working method that habitually causes repetitive marks to be inflicted onto their studio surfaces. Whether dripped, scratched, taped, cut, erased, smeared, hammered: all are repetitive and typically unguarded instances of the process of drawing. The wall, floor or table acts as a raw surface and means to capture these on-going activities that the artist ritualistically performs; the remains of the method left behind is as familiar as it is often taken for granted in an artist’s practice and is rarely publicly exposed. These studio surfaces are an integral part and an extension of the drawing process, which are then discarded, or severed from the work. They hold a fascination of their own: not just as a documentation of the artist’s creative process, but as an informative insight into the relationship between what is subconscious and conscious in the artist’s drawing practice.

Collateral Drawing Berlin explores the relationship between finished works and the collateral drawing which fed into or resulted from their making in the work of ten artists with London or Berlin connections – Each artist was approached by the curators six months in advance and asked to retain the collateral elements of some new work, including by isolating part of the studio with a customised temporary blank surface that could then be used to record the artists’ subconscious actions around their day-to-day creativity. These raw surfaces were then carefully removed from the studio, now to be displayed alongside an artwork that the artist produced onto them during this period.

The Collateral Drawing Series was launched at Plymouth College of Art in February 2014, followed by an Anglo – Greek collaboration between six artists – three from each country – in Athens in May 2014.

Supported by Plymouth College of Art

www.collateraldrawing.org
www.beaston.co.uk
www.paulsartworld.blogspot.co.uk