Drawing Research Forum 20/05/22

Maryclare Foá, Birgitta Hosea & Carali McCall will present Performance Drawing 2021 at Drawing Room London’s Drawing Research Forum on Friday 20th May.

To mark the first anniversary of the publication of Performance Drawing: New Practices since 1945 (Bloomsbury 2020), Maryclare Foá, Birgitta Hosea and Carali McCall organised a residency, a virtual exhibition and a series of events to extend the initial exploration of works in the book to consider the future of practice at the intersection of drawing and performance. Adopting a collaborative, post-Lockdown, curatorial perspective, a range of in-person and online events were held expanding the notion of the gallery into different spaces and platforms including the Centre for Recent Drawing, Hundred Years Gallery, KunstMatrix, Zoom and Instagram. The international artists exhibited in Performance Drawing 2021 (Adelaide Damoah, Maurice Moore, Piyali Ghosh, Ram Samocha, sophie bartholomew) show work made since the date of writing that expands the themes of the book into new directions. In dialogue with these artists, Foá, Hosea and McCall worked together on a residency at C4RD to generate new ideas and new practice.

In this presentation for the Drawing Research Forum 2021, Foá, Hosea and McCall will present and reflect upon Performance Drawing 2021 and the experience of curating and creating for different audiences across multiple platforms. They welcome the opportunity for peer review and feedback that this symposium will afford.

For more information and to book a place click here.

Images from the virtual exhibition hosted by C4RD and created with KunstMatrix:

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Performance Drawing 2021

Performance Drawing 2021 presents works by international artists whose practice stretches, pulls, pushes and steps across disciplines relating to drawing and performance.

To mark the first anniversary of the publication, Performance Drawing: New Practices since 1945 (Bloomsbury 2020), the Centre for Recent Drawing presents an online show and in-person residency with curated events that extends the initial exploration of works in the book and considers the future of practice at the intersection of drawing and performance. Featured artists’ works were made since the date of writing and develop the book’s themes in new directions: Adelaide Damoah, Birgitta Hosea, Carali McCall, Maryclare Foá, Maurice Moore, Piyali Ghosh, Ram Samocha, sophia bartholomew. 

Adelaide Domoah 

A Litany for Survival, 2019, is a visceral, powerful work by Adelaide Domoah inspired by Audre Lorde’s poem of the same name. In her performance, Domoah addresses physicality and the body in struggle. Her works can be seen as referencing various performance drawing actions in paint, from past to present.  

Maurice Moore 

In Drawing While Black, aka Black Boy Joy, 2020, Maurice Moore marks on brown paper and/or on black board while dancing in a hand-crafted mask. Travelling back and forth in a defiant gestural flow, Moore applies rhythmic marks that references both the joy of dance and the defiance of black queer dance culture. 

Piyali Ghosh 

In Naksha an Untold Odyssey, 2019, Piyali Ghosh embodies drawing and becomes the gestural moving sculpture that is in conversation with the material of her drawn works; addressing elements of ritual and also the performative process. As her body becomes the space, she is performative: interacting with her work and sometimes wearing pieces as costume. 

Ram Samocha 

In Mountain Range Outline, 2020, Ram Samocha traces the ridges of a mountain range in the distance with a tube of condensed milk on cellophane. Responding directly to the landscape, Samocha reimages the scenery and in so doing, also references both the personal and the rural. 

sophia bartholomew 

sophia bartholomew’s work The strand like the spirit: the spirit like the breath, 2021, references the landscape, wind, snow, wide open space. The work expands the notion of performance drawing to include the history of the body’s presence in the environment; using their own voice as a sounding.

C4RD Residency (14th Sept – 14th Oct 2021)

During the residency, Foá, Hosea and McCall will be investigating their individual practice as well as working in collaborations that include drawing, performance and the curation of online events. The aim is to reflect on their publication, Performance Drawing: New Practices Since 1945 (2020), and to address new issues raised by the artists’ work in the exhibition Performance Drawing 2021.

Events Programme:

Performance Drawing 2021 online exhibition in browser-based VR with Adelaide Damoah, Maurice Moore, Piyali Ghosh, Ram Samocha, sophia bartholomew (curated by Foá, Hosea and McCall)  – 14 Sept – 14th Oct

Foá, Hosea and McCall Residency at C4RD – 14 Sept – 14th Oct 

Piyali Ghosh performance on Instagram Live, Sat 18th Sept 5pm (BST)

Ram Samocha performance on Instagram Live Sat 25th Sept 7pm (BST)

sophia bartholomew performance on Instagram Live Sat 2nd Oct 5pm (BST)

Draw to Perform: Ram Samocha interviews Maryclare Foá, Birgitta Hosea and Carali McCall. Sun 3rd Oct 8pm BST.  Book on EventBrite.

Adelaide Damoah, Maurice Moore and Ram Samocha in conversation with Foá, Hosea and McCall. Tues 5th Oct 7pm BST. Book on EventBrite.

Birgitta Hosea/Carali McCall/Claire Zakiewicz performance at Hundred Years Gallery. Weds 13th Oct. Curated by Claire Zakiewicz. Book on EventBrite (link TBC)

Piyali Ghosh and sophia bartholomew in conversation with Foá, Hosea and McCall. Thurs 14th Oct 6pm BST. Book on EventBrite.

Register on Eventbrite

Performance Drawing: New Practices Since 1945

Published by: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020
Preface written by: Anna Furse. Foreword written by: Bonnie Marranca
Part of the Drawing In series, edited by Russell Marshall, Marsha Meskimmon and Phil Sawdon.

The first book to be published on ‘Performance Drawing’. A visual arts book that features a wide range of artists involved in the expanded field of drawing, demonstrating rigorous academic research. It establishes performance drawing as a vibrant art movement that has been progressively burgeoning since 1945 and contextualises today’s contemporary approaches – questioning what is drawing and what is performance? Each chapter focuses on a different perspective of performance drawing. Embracing the different voices and various lenses, the authors combine individual yet critical methodologies. While embedded in ephemerality and immediacy, the themes encompass body and energy, time and motion, light and space, imagined and observed, demonstrating how drawing can act as a performative tool. The dynamic interaction leads to a collective understanding of the term performance drawing and addresses the key developments and future directions of this applied drawing process.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/performance-drawing-9781788313841

About the Authors:

Maryclare Foá was awarded her PhD at Camberwell, UAL; an acclaimed artist with work featured in Drawing Now: Between the Lines of Contemporary Art; and recently shortlisted for Moore Prize. Jane Grisewood awarded her PhD at Central Saint Martins, UAL, where she teaches experimental drawing; her artworks and artists books are acquired in international collections, and recent exhibitions include the Line/Extended at University of Hertfordshire (UHArts). Birgitta Hosea is a time-based media artist and Professor of Moving Image at the University for the Creative Arts, UK. Previously, Head of Animation at the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins, where she completed her PhD in animation as a form of performance in 2012. Carali McCall exhibits internationally, awarded her PhD at Central Saint Martins, UAL. A finalist in the 2017 Jerwood Drawing Prize and awarded Arts Council England.

Endorsements:

“Performance Drawing represents a highly developed record of practice-based research, tracing the developments in contemporary drawing, building on precedents that have led to emerging trends. It analyzes the radical departure from the acceptance of drawing as a canonical medium based on mark-making on two-dimensional surfaces, into real space towards performance, light projections, film and the use of new technologies. The texts brilliantly place all these developments into a clearly articulated context.” – Therese Bolliger, artist, Canada

“While narrative forms of drawing have found favor through numerous exhibitions and publications world-wide, drawing as an inherently process-driven performative event is still lacking accessible comprehensive theoretical research. Bridging two centuries of contemporary practice, Performance Drawing will fill a huge gap for artists, teachers, scholars and art publics.” – François Morelli, Concordia University, Canada

“A valuable historical primer that examines key examples of performance drawing from the last half-century and challenges established definitions and categorisations. The authors draw a picture of the changing boundaries between art forms, showing how the blurred lines between artistic disciplines are the product of an active performative process. In addition to practitioners, this should be read by anyone interested in emerging art practices.” – Malcom Cook, Associate Professor in Film, University of Southampton

WE ARE SOCIAL / Please contact for any further information.

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@performancedrawing   #performancedrawing

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@birgittahosea

@caralimccall

 

Embodied Drawing Workshops

Embodied Drawing Workshop led by Maryclare Foa, Andrew Hall and Birgitta Hosea, Drawing Research Network Conference, Loughborough University, 2019

Embodied Drawing Workshop led by Birgitta Hosea (planned with Maryclare Foa), Hackney Wicked Festival, 2019

dotdot dash

dotdot dash, Birgitta Hosea 2018-9

Participatory light action with lasers and improvised voice designed for public space. Originally commissioned by InspiralLondon. More info here.

Night Walking North Kent Festival, Gravesend, 2018:

London As Park City Festival, Regents Canal, 2018:

Directions for the visual music come from a chance-based score made by walking on musical paper:

Notes on a Table, Folkestone, 2016

Notes on a Table (Folkestone Green) and (Folkestone Blue)
(Maryclare Foá, Jane Grisewood, Birgitta Hosea, Carali McCall)

Residency at Whelkboy Gallery, Creative Quarter, Folkestone, August 2016

MarKings: symposium and festival of performance and drawing

Notes on a Table (House of Illustration) 2016  (performance by Maryclare Foá, Jane Grisewood, Birgitta Hosea, Carali McCall)

8-9th July 2016, MarKings, Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins UAL/House of Illustration

Approximately: 240 x 128 cm, conversation, sound, graphite and coloured crayon on paper

Event review by John Miers in Spark Journal

Line Dialogue VI, 2013

Line Dialogue VI (2013), Carali McCall and Jane Grisewood

30-minute performance drawing in front of live audience, charcoal and graphite, overall 400 x 200 cm. ‘Draw to Perform’ exhibition at Performance Space, Hackney, London.

Rosary Drawing XII, 2015

[Rosary Drawing XII performance, rehearsal in studio, Birgitta Hosea, 2015]

[Remnants from Rosary Drawing XII performance, Birgitta Hosea, 2015]

This work was developed by Birgitta Hosea during a residency in a former convent in Atina, Lazio, Italy that was organised and curated by Rekha Sameer.

Although brought up aetheist, Birgitta Hosea spent the entire residency drawing her recently deceased and much mourned Swedish grandmother’s broken rosary beads and trying to learn more about the Catholic faith of her mother’s family.

The more she drew, the more she began to think about about both of her grandmothers, one Swedish, one Scottish, and indeed about all of the women who work tirelessly and selflessly for their families: invisible labour that is taken for granted and forgotten about.

[Image by Chris Simpson, 2015, cropped]

By the 12th drawing, she decided to use the tools and materials of domestic cleaning to make a drawing of the rosary beads – scrubbing away the paper to create the highlighlights on each bead. As the antique Roman floor was too delicate to make a performance using scouring on, out of the the many drawings she had made, at the final exhibition she chose to only show these.

[Rosary Drawing XII, Atina Residency exhibition, Palazzo Ducale dei Cantelmo, Atina, Italy, 2015]

For Hosea, this work captured everything she had learnt on the residency – that the actions of cleaning and the time taken to scrub each piece of paper could be recorded in a sequence of images that ressemble a filmstrip.  Like a filmstrip, the rosary is also a device to record actions over time – the prayers that are supposed to be said for each bead. So for her, this work is a type of animation.

Asked to submit experimental animation for Beyond Noumenon, an exhibition and forum at Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts in Chongqing, China, she submitted a proposal to perform this work as a piece of live animation and, to her surprise, was accepted with great enthusiasm and generosity by curators Tingting Lu and Tianran Duan.

She then performed the drawing at the private view next to other wall-based sequential images she had made. Scrubbed clean of all makeup, on her hands and knees, she said invocations while going through the rosary beads and scrubbed one piece of paper for each bead on the string.

[Rosary Drawing XII performance, Birgitta Hosea, Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts, 2016]

Following this exhibition, she performed the work again at 51% Remember Her, a group exhibition of feminist art curated by Rebecca Feiner at Tower Gallery, London.

[Rosary Drawing XII performance, Birgitta Hosea, Tower Gallery, London, 2017]

Click here to view the 51% Remember Her catalogue: 51%_Catalogue

This work then became part of her solo show Erasure, at Hanmi Gallery, Seoul, Korea in 2018. View catalogue here.

Interview about the show by Studio International.

Footage of the show (silent) with video documentation of Rosary XII performance at the private view:

SEeAFAR: 27th Sept – 5th Oct 2014

Fresh from the Folkestone Triennial Fringe, this touring exhibition curated by Birgitta Hosea brings together new work from Foa + Hosea, Carali McCall, Anne Robinson, Sarah Sparkes and Thurle Wright. Using a range of media – drawing, animation, performance to video, light installation, painting and collage, the works engage with living with the constant presence of an absence through the metaphor of waiting for someone to return from sea.

OPEN FROM 12-6pm on: 27th, 28th September and 1-5th October

PRIVATE VIEW: Friday 26th September 6-8pm – if you would like to attend – register for the Private View on Facebook or EventBrite

[Invite image Jane Conquest Rings the Bell (detail) Sarah Sparkes, mixed media, 2014]