Gary Sangster on the Choose Art I Give Light to Refugees Benefit Auction - until 29 June 2020

Artists are amongst the most insightful and generous people I know. Their goal is to observe and describe the world as they see it and animate that description in a way that makes the world a richer and more meaningful experience for us all. They can bring into focus unseen, unnoticed moments, uncover the invisible, and they can personalise global events and movements that affect each of us in different ways. 

With this in mind, Choose Art | Give Light to Refugees is a Benefit Auction of rare urgency, inflected and coloured by the immediate effects of dual global tragedies, the pandemic and the refugee crisis. The artists donating their work signals their personal commitment, but also sense of joint responsibility. 

We read the work with added nuance and we see the world in different ways, because of the moment and because of the art.

Some with a painful poignancy like Our Bush Dresses - Kangaroo Paws by Lori Pensini (Australia), The Coming of the Boatman by Guy Warren (Australia), or Home by Charmaine Watkiss (UK).

Some with menacing threat and fear, like Report US Dailies by Eileen Boxer (USA), an extraordinary and celebrated suite of books documenting daily gun deaths in the USA, or Merilyn Fairskye’s #44484d (cyberspace), 2019-2020, the interior of a Soviet-era space capsule in the Moscow Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics. 

There is the tenderness, fragility, or ominousness of the natural landscape or garden, in Mandy Bonnell’s delicate Hibiscus, or Shade of Soul from Doi Pa Dang #6 by Noppanan Thannaree (Thailand).

And there is the inherent political meanings in After The Raft of the Medusa, a compelling, arresting work by John Beard (UK/Australia), in Mairéad McClean’s ensemble of works, To Be Retained, 2018, with its comic bureaucracy, “seven cows, found in suspicious circumstances”, in the ever iconic Nixon, by Colin Crumplin (UK), and in Ian Howard (Australia), Vienna to Prague, a dynamic work made from face fragments, the discarded cuttings of edited travel document headshots.

The range and quality of the work and ideas in Choose Art | Give Light to Refugees, and the urgency of our shared experience in this disrupted world, makes this project both timely and necessary.

Gary Sangster, 2020

Gary Sangster is an art historian and curator, and Co-Director of Drawing Projects UK. He has international curatorial experience as Chief Curator of the National Art Gallery, New Zealand; Curator, The New Museum, New York City; and as Director of the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore; Director of the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art; Director of Headlands, San Francisco; Director of Artspace, Sydney; Interim Director of Arts Catalyst – Art, Science and Technology, London; and as Trustee, Arnolfini, Bristol. Education appointments include: Dean, Art Institute of Boston, Lesley University, USA. Key exhibitions include: Two World’s Collide, Sydney; The Decade Show, NYC; Breathing Time, New Orleans; Judith Barry for the US Pavilion (Grand Prize), Cairo Biennale; and touring survey exhibitions for Komar & Melamid, Mary Kelly, Kerry James Marshall, and Genevieve Cadieux.

What's happening at Drawing Projects

Cabinet: Margaret Kilgallen print above a Vanson credenza designed by Peter Hayward

Cabinet - an exhibition of works on paper, ceramics and furn…

Cabinet at Drawing Projects UK presents works on paper and furniture from our collection and on consignment. Please join us on Saturday 6 April from 2-5pm to view the exhibition. This changing exhibition will be open by appointment only after this date, and continues until Summer 2024.  Works on paper are by James Brooks, Yvonne Crossley RWA, Peter de Francia, Margaret Kilgallen...

17-03-2024

Trowbridge Stanza Poetry Session at Drawing Projects UK

Informal Poetry Feedback Session with Trowbridge Stanza - 6 …

You are invited to bring one of your own poems for informal feedback from the Trownbridge Stanza group on Saturday 6 April from 2pm to 4pm at Drawing Projects UK.  Your poem should be in 12 font and fit one A4 page - 30-36 lines maximum. Please bring ten copies of a poem that you feel needs some more work. Everyone is...

17-03-2024

Girl Friday Breakfast Club with Helen Legg at Drawing Projects UK in 2018

Girl Friday Breakfast Club on International Women's Day - 8 …

Join us online for the Girl Friday Breakfast Club online on Friday 8 March 2024 at 8am (UK-time), convened by Anita Taylor. Friday 8 March is International Women's Day - and six years since we started the Girl Friday Breakfast Club! To celebrate we are inviting our Girl Friday Breakfast Club attendees and those interested to know more about the Girl...

17-03-2024

From the Blog

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 at Trinity Buoy Wharf, September 2023

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 Call for Entries &…

The International Call for Entries for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 is now open for all drawing practitioners to submit their work for the exhibition and awards. Widely considered to be the most prestigious annual open exhibition for drawing in the UK, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize presents an exceptionally wide range of current drawing practices, demonstrating the depth and breadth of drawing...

10-03-2024

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 Exhibition & Tour

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust, is widely regarded as the foremost annual open exhibition dedicated to drawing in the United Kingdom. The 2023 edition marks the 30th year of the exhibition project and the 6th year of generous support from Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust for the annual open exhibition. The open call...

13-10-2023

Octogenarian Dance: Yvonne Crossley - until 18 November 2023

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to present a solo exhibition, Octogenarian Dance, by Yvonne Crossley RWA from 23 September to 18 November 2023. The exhibition is open each Saturday from 7 October from 1pm to 4pm, by advance appointment and during events. Here are some images of the exhibition to give you a sense of the wonderful work on show...

04-10-2023

View all blog stories