A Tradition of Immediacy: Group Drawing Exhibition
December 13, 2009 – 7:54 pm by Andrew Paul Wood
A Tradition of Immediacy: Group Drawing Exhibition
Observatory Art Room, Christchurch Arts Centre
10 – 13 December 2009
Conversely, the graphic line can only exist against this background, so that a drawing that completely covered its background would cease to be a drawing. This confers on the background a specific role that is indispensable for the meaning of the drawing, so that in a drawing of two lines they can be related to each other only through the background – a feature, incidentally, that clearly distinguishes the graphic line from the geometric line. – The graphic line confers an identity on its background. The identity of the background of a drawing is quite different from that of the white surface inscribed. We might even deny it that identity by thinking of it as a surge of white waves (though these might not even be distinguishable to the naked eye). The pure drawing will not alter the meaningful graphic function of its background by “leaving it blank” as a white ground. This explains why, in certain circumstances, representing clouds and sky in drawings is a risky venture and can act as a touchstone of the drawing’s purity of style. – Walter Benjamin.
This is not your father’s drawing – in many cases contemporary drawing has either quite literally erased all definition aside from the line, the mark, usually on a flat surface, or as some kind of cheeky re-conceptualisation of the drawing as a kind of design, cartoon, plan, where the emphasis is Situationalist and there may not even be any classical drawing at all. To my way of thinking, the line is the key element of definition and deserves respect for the skill required. The craftsman takes pride in his ability to make the same thing many times over to the best level of quality, showing craft and technique through reproducability, and disdaining originality as a lack thereof. While it might be entrenched and archaic of me to suggest that it is the artist’s role to value originality and uniqueness as displays of technique and virtuosity, the frequent use of mechanical reproduction seems to fly in the face of that definition, even if there is direct reference to an urtext, but I am certainly not suggesting the almost religious Werktreue fundamentalism that all which is not commanded, is forbidden.
Of course, challenge and conflict is always healthy, and it seems appropriate that such a show (curated by Clare Noonan) be seen at the Arts Centre, formerly Canterbury College of New Zealand, where the Jewish-Austrian philosopher Karl Popper ended up teaching having fled the Nazis. Popper didn’t particularly like Christchurch, feeling abgeschnitten (‘cut off’), but living in an open society allowed him to contemplate its enemies, resulting in his magnum opus The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper advised that we should welcome disagreement as a contribution to our process of reasoning. Wittgenstein didn’t agree, which is why he tried to hit Popper with a fireplace poker at Cambridge University. Mind you, if you dared to argue with Popper he was libel to go off like a sack full of ferrets – do as I say, not as I do, and all that. Nothing in this show seems to agree on the nature of drawing, so it’s doing its job progressing the discourse, just as a drawing progresses a line.
The exhibition shepherded together an interesting mob of artists: Paul Johns, Nathan Pohio, Rachel O’Neil, g. bridle, Marnie Slater, Liz Allan, Paul Bozo (a distancing artistic persona), and Scott Flanagan. Noonan included one of her own delicious mechanical drawings – “Provisional Field” (2009) – multiple overlays of diagonal lines like a seismograph during the Big One in subtle colour. The mechanical nature of the production certainly challenges the nature of a drawing as a physical act from brain and eye to hand, but not as much as the ever-underrated Johns’ ecologically-themed “Antarctica, 7 December 2009, The Season of Whaling Has Begun” (2009). This work is the text of email sent to Johns by Greenpeace, printed poster-fashion on transparent acetate – but then letters constitute lines, even if printed.
In a similar vein is Pohio’s typed sheets forming an intimist autobiographical snapshot in the form of a short typed poem. Again, we can interpret letter as making line, but also the act of narrative description is intimately bound to the function and nature of drawing – but why insist on applying the category of drawing? Why not just call it an exhibition of art?
The most classical drawing (from my conservative viewpoint anyway) is the delicious little edition of drawings put out as a book by Slater titled Far, Far Away. These fine little pencil and watercolour drawings are reproduced beautifully and invest a magical aura in some fairly mundane fruits and vegetables that remind one a little of Rory McEwen’s detailed nature studies – each is a modest retinal hand grenade detonating on the high-quality paper.
I rather like Bozo’s abstract camouflage- like dense Kandinsky/Klee-esque patchwork in coloured pencil on notepaper “Pallete Block” (2009) and its companion piece – created by monoprint impression on the former – “Banter Transcript” (2009). I also liked the way Flanagan used the positioning of some stairs to force only one viewer can look at it at a time. A similar transference effect is achieved in Liz Allan’s ballpoint pen frottage of signage Free School (2008).
Of course, it is the true and proper role of the critic and reviewer to embrace Popper’s advice. The reviewer is not doing their job unless they allow themselves to be challenged by the work, and I certainly felt challenged to accept “Pania” (2005) g. bridle. First of all cutesy e. e. cummings-like all lower case is like a red flag to a bull to me – it suggests you don’t appreciate clarity of communication in language because upper case letters have very distinct informative value in literacy. I don’t include cummings in that number because he could make text dance. But I digress. “Pania” is a sort of Situationalist collage of newspaper cuttings regarding the theft of the bronze statue of “Pania of the Rocks” from the Napier waterfront, but I can’t accept it as ‘drawing’ – the artist does not even appear to have altered the text in any meaningful enough way to justify itself as a drawing; but that’s merely my opinion.
On the whole, this was a very worthy exhibition, but perhaps one can only push so far.
