LEARNING - Artist led projects
Artist-led projects extend and interpret exhibitions and provide participants with their first introduction to professional practice. We commission artists to conceive a project that uses the exhibition as a starting point and that forms an inquiry into the medium of drawing, through reference to their own practice.
Past projects have involved: Mateo Lopez, Tom Varley, Amanda Bracken, James Brooks, Polly Gould, Alison Guile, Karen Logan, Mateo Lopez, Kaffe Mathews, Amalia Pica, Albert Potrony, Reuben Powell, Shane Waltener, and Jude Walton, and participants from Hackney Community College, the Bridge Academy, and Kids Co.
If you are a tutor or group leader and who would like to find out more about these projects please contact Drawing Room mail@drawingroom.org.uk
FORTHCOMING
ARTIST LED WEEKEND DRAWING WORKSHOPS
These workshops are open to anyone and all abilities.
Saturday 30th and Sunday 1st June, 10.30-4.30
Jess Flood-Paddock ‘Still Live? Confronting Your Inner Lobster’
For this weekend workshop artist Jess Flood-Paddock will guide us through a mental and
physical voyage alongside her creative companion the humble lobster, a creature she
introduces in works such as Big Lobster Supper (2010). In the workshop Flood-
Paddock will elucidate her on-going questioning of the conflicting sentiments aroused by
the cycle of consuming and being consumed.
Jess Flood-Paddock lives and works in London. Educated at the Slade School of
Art, Royal College of Art and Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibitions include Art and Fashion Collusion, with Jonathan Saunders, V&A Museum, London, (July 2012); Recent British Sculpture (2010); Grimm Gallery Amsterdam; Fantastic Voyage, Carl Freedman (2011) Gangsta’s Paradise at the Hayward GalleryProject Space, London (2010).
Fee: £120 including materials, lunch and light refreshments..The workshop runs for 2 consecutive days.
http://jessflood-paddock.eventbrite.com/
Saturday 7th & Sunday 8th July 10:30 – 5pm
Bonnie Camplin "Thingness" of Things: Magical Drawing Class - Every Object is Alive!
When drawing from ‘still’-life can we learn to recognise which of the three cognitive
operations - MEMORY, OBSERVATION or INVENTION - is active within any one moment?
Bonnie Camplin will explore dreams, memory re-call and imagination in this magical workshop where the days will be divided into exercises that are designed to activate the faculties of memory, invention and observation. Each day will culminate in a film screening. Participants are asked to bring in a favourite object as a working aid; Camplin will suggest ways to animate this object, magically transforming it to life.
Bonnie Camplin lives and works in London. She has showed nationally and internationally and has collaborated with Enrico David, Mark Leckey, Lucy MacKenzie and Paulina Olowska. Recent projects include Soundworks, ICA, London and she is currently artists’ mentor for the LUX Associates Programme.
FEE: £120 including materials, lunch and light refreshments. This workshop runs for 2 consecutive days
http://bonniecamplin.eventbrite.com/
Workshops kindly supported by CASS ART www.cassart.co.uk
PAST ARTIST LED WORKSHOPS
Tom Varley workshop with students from Southwark College
Monday 20 & Tuesday 21 February 2012
Tom Varley led a workshop with students from the Foundation Art and Design course, Southwark College. The workshops were devised to encourage risk taking and experimentation through a series of games/exercises based on Augusto Boal’s Games for Actors and Non Actors. Over two days the students with the artist produced a series of collaborative drawings.
Tom Varley was selected as the recipient of the Drawing Room’s first Bursary Award, which took place 16 January– 12 February 2012. Tom Varley chose to use the gallery as a studio for a month to experiment with ideas rather than produce a finished and substantive body of work. The Bursary Award reflects Drawing Room’s commitment to supporting the production of new work and the development of artists’ practice at different stages in their career.
Southwark college students participating in Tom Varley workshop at the Drawing Room
Mateo Lopez and Foundation students from Southwark College
September 2011
In conjunction with The Peripatetic School; Itinerant Drawing from Latin America, Colombian artist Mateo Lopez led a workshop with 12 students at the nearby Southwark College. The workshop, which the students focused on over a 3-week period, began with a visit to Drawing Room's new south London gallery. Inspired by Mateo Lopez's practice of observing and recreating the everyday world, the students each created their own body of work that reflected their own current interests and concerns. The ideas generated were incredibly diverse, ranging from interior design to the subjective and semi-conscious response to music. The feedback from the students was very positive with many stating that this was the most open-ended project that had encountered, and one which fulfilled Mateo Lopez's goal of showing drawing to be expansive and exploratory. Mary Doyle, Co-Director, Drawing Room, participated in a critical review of the work produced on the final day of the project.
Artist Mateo Lopez with a Southwark College student
Amalia Pica ‘Alternative Ways of Viewing or Living in the Modern World: A Research Project’
November 2010
To coincide with Best Laid Plans Argentinian artist Amalia Pica conceived a project for 18 BTEC Foundation students at Hackney Community College. This was a week-long project that began with a visit to Best Laid Plans at the Drawing Room. Amalia Pica conducted workshops at Hackney Community College and each student produced a body of work in response. Kate Macfarlane, Co-Director, Drawing Room, participated in a critical review of the work produced on the final day of the project. Funded by Aimhigher (Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills).
Artist Amalia Pica leading a review of the project
February - March 2010
To coincide with SHUDDER, an exhibition of drawn animations, we produced an artist-led project in collaboration with the Post Graduate Diploma Character Animation course, Central St Martins College of Art. The workshops were conceived by artist Phoebe Boswell with assistance from a Central St Martins tutor and Post Graduate Animation students who mentored the young participants. The young people were recruited from youth clubs and from Kids Co. Participants joined ten drawing and animation workshops which culminated in the production of a short animation that was screened for one night as part of SHUDDER. The project was funded by Widening Participation, Central St Martins.
Shudder artist-led project: artist Phoebe Boswell and participant, Central St Martins
Amalia Pica 'Endless Adaptions'
September 2009
To coincide with the exhibition Alejandro Jodorowsky's ‘Dune’: An exhibition of a film of a book that never was the artist Amalia Pica devised a project for a group of twenty BTEC foundation art students (16 to 40+ yrs) from Hackney Community College. Taking the exhibition at the Drawing Room as a point of departure, the students spent one week exploring notions of authorship, adaptation and appropriation in order to propose, develop and install a final piece as part of their first group show. They each produced a body of work in response and the Drawing Room Co-Directors joined the group for a review of the work produced on the final day.
Amalia Pica with students at Hackney Community College
KAFFE MATHEWS AND SHANE WALTENER and pupils from the Bridge Academy
To coincide with a series of events From Scratch
JULY 2009
Artists Kaffe Matthews and Shane Waltener led students through visual and sound workshops to explore the activities and methodology of Cornelius Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra. The students considered sound as musical objects, exploring and developing their own creative process. The 6 session workshops led to a performance by pupils on Regents Canal.
Kaffe Matthews, has been making and performing new musics around the world for the past fifteen years. From a background in classical violin, a Zoology degree, studying with W.African drummers, acid house engineering and a masters in Music Technology, she is now most known for her live sampling performances of violin in particular places in real time: heard in installations, on stage, in galleries, clubs, various locations. Mathews introduced and established the course Performance Technology at Dartington College of Arts, Devon and is now tutoring violin and live electronic techniques to students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. Mathews worked as a director for Sonic Arts Network and the London Musicians Collective.
Shane Waltener is an artist living in London. He has contributed to numerous exhibitions internationally and completed a number of public commissions. Waltener draws inspiration from craft traditions as much as art history. Sculptures, installations and performance work all reference in some way domestic crafts such as knitting, crochet, lace making techniques, sugarcraft and cooking. Recent projects have become increasingly participatory, involving artists, visitors, spectators and community groups in the making of the artworks. Waltener facilitates a process of 'crafting' together in order to allow for cultural and social histories relating to these crafts to be freely exchanged.
Jude Walton: ‘Dancing the Book’
To coincide with a series of events From Scratch
in collaboration with ICFAR, University of the Arts, London
Monday 6 & Tuesday 7 July, 10.00 – 16.30
A two-day workshop, led by Australian artist Jude Walton, exploring the relationship between gesture, mark and movement, and the documents and records that result. This workshop is for artists, performers and writers. Jude Walton is a Melbourne based interdisciplinary artist who is a Summer Fellow at ICFAR.
Jude Walton is an artist/academic currently teaching performance at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. Her art practice includes writing, philosophy, dance, spatial design, architecture, video, and all sorts of ephemera. An ongoing project is ‘dancing the book: looking at artists’ books and dance’ and is based around the artists’ book collection in the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It explores the possible relations between body and book, dance and writing, action and the word.
For more details visit www.icfar.org.uk
There Is No Alternative?: Drawing Pad project with artist Albert Potrony and Hackney Community College
To coincide with TINA exhibition
October 2008
Student from Hackney Community College and artist Albert Potrony
Artist Albert Potrony led a Drawing Pad project with Hackney Community College Foundation Art and Design students. The students engaged with the TINA exhibition and addressed issues of rules within society and our current economic climate. Using the exhibition as a starting point each student responded to the work in the show and questioned rules and constructs within their environment through the use of drawing, audio, video and animation.
Albert Potrony is a visual artist who works in a variety of media including drawing, sculpture, installation and video. In his work he explores the notions of time, place , perception and the translation of our experiences. In his projects participation from diverse groups of people have been key elements. He uses workshops to engage with groups to investigate ideas around play and decision making. Alongside his practice Albert works as an arts educator and has led workshops for Whitechapel Gallery, Gasworks, Bow Arts Trust, Goldsmiths College, University of London and Next Generation at the National Theatre
Laburnum Street Party Workshop
July 2008 with Reuben Powell
To coincide with Nowhere is here exhibition
Artist Reuben Powell led a workshop with local children and visitors responding to the exhibition Nowhere is here and inspired by the local environment.
Reuben Powell is a visual artist based in London, currently resident at Elephant and Castle shopping centre. Reuben has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Using his surrounding environment as inspiration and subject matter Reuben creates beautifully rendered drawings and paintings highlighting the beauty and harshness in the urban environment.
Drawing Pad project with artist James Brooks and Hackney Community College
To coincide with Hayley Tompkins exhibition
Students from Hackney Community College
Artist James Brooks led a Drawing Pad project with Hackney Community College Foundation Art & Design students. Artist James Brooks curated a group exhibition in response to Hayley Tompkins practice. Students visited the exhibition and were introduced to the work of Hayley Tompkins as a springboard for the production of new work. The students then installed their work at The Drawing Room and received a critical appraisal of their curatorial approach and the individual works made from the Directors.
James Brooks has exhibited at: Riflemaker, London/ Seventeen, London/ Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/ Galerie Martina Detterer, Frankfurt/ Tate Britain, London/ Trinity Contemporary, London, Arcade, London, and DomoBaal, London. Furthermore, in 2008 he had a solo show at Monika Bobinska, London. Drawing in its broadest sense, forms the backbone of James Brooks’ practice and using as his source material strands of popular culture, (photo, film, recording/ object/ text) which have become absorbed into the fabric of contemporary life. He consciously reworks their original associations into an altered sensibility as a way to draw attention to the individual aura and character of the absent original.
Laburnum Street Party Workshop
1 July 2007 with Alison Guile
To coincide with Geoffrey Farmer: The Last Two Million Years
The workshop took Geoffrey Farmer's exhibition as the starting point for visitors to source imagery from found encyclopedias, magazines, books to create alternative worlds.
Polly Gould Confidence
October 2005
To coincide with SOUNDS LIKE DRAWING exhibition
Polly Gould led a project with Hackney Community College students in relation to Sounds like Drawing exhibition. Gould led a series of workshop sessions with foundation students in which the sense of sight was compared with the sense of sound. Participants played alternating roles of listener, speaker and sketcher in activities that involved drawing, sound and video. The result was a narrative work by Gould that was exhibited at Tannery Arts in November 2005.
Karen Logan Paper Cut
July 2005
To coincide with Diana Cooper & Hew Locke exhibition
A six-session project led by artist Karen Logan to extend and interpret the Diana Cooper and Hew Locke exhibition. Pupils from London Fields Primary School visited THE DRAWING ROOM exhibition and the artist created a collaborative work with them in the Project room at SPACE. This project was linked to the Campaign for Drawing's 'Big Draw 2004'. Oct/Nov 2004.Supported by SPACE and the London Borough of Hackney.
Amanda Bracken - Drawing and Colour
Feb/March 2004
To coincide with A KIND OF BLISS exhibition
A six-session project led by artist Amanda Bracken, inspired by A Kind of Bliss exhibition and her own practice. Pupils from Whitmore Primary School visited THE DRAWING ROOM exhibition and Amanda conducted five practical workshops at the school, culminating in ambitious works created by pupils in teams of two.
Funded by The Ernest Cook Trust and supported by Space Studios Mentoring Scheme.
Amanda Bracken builds fragile sculptures from found objects such as china tea cups. These tangible objects then become the subject of subtle, illusionistic drawings.’
Unifying themes include colour, lightness and weight, movement and stillness.
She is interested in drawing as a process of control and repetition and painting in its most fluid and gravity laden anti-control.Bracken has researched and lead many art projects for Gallery education in London Including Serpentine Gallery, Estorick Collection, Hayward, and Victoria Miro Gallery.