Drawing Out The Canal - Simon Woolham: Performance - 12 Oct

Join us on Saturday 12 October from 12noon until 3pm for the preview of Drawing Out The Canal by Simon Woolham. As part of the unveiling of the installation in the gallery, Simon will perform and interpret the drawing through a performance with local musicians - saxophonist Nick Sorensen and violinist Joanna Harvey. 

Drawing Out the Canal is the outcome of the drawing, walking and talking project undertaken by Simon Woolham in August 2019 along the Kennet and Avon Canal. As an instinctive and organic process, interpreting the past, present and future visions of an important, historically and socially significant site the process engages with the spaces and surfaces through the physical process of taking rubbings from the architecture, machinery, towpaths, gates and locks. Developed from this process and generation of a variety of rubbings and tracings, an immersive as well as smaller, intimate artworks from the ‘textures of history’ in relation to the walk will be presented and explore the geography, history and narrative of the canal route as well as the spaces of Drawing Projects UK.

Simon’s practice as an artist, curator and teaching specialism is centred around expanded drawing research and methodology and this was the focus of his practice-led PhD from 2012 and awarded in 2016 at Manchester Metropolitan University. The PhD explored walking (in the broadest sense) and narrative in physical, virtual and psychological space, expanding on the notion of an artists’ residency of the mind. 

The project is supported by the University of Huddersfield, where Simon is a lecturer and researcher, and the walk along the Kennet and Avon Canal also raised funds for The Pituitary Foundation.