Drawing Discussion: On Drawing Matter - Wednesday 28 July 2021

Drawing Matter is our current exhibition featuring Eleanor Bartlett, Lucinda Burgess, and Carole Pearson from 26 June to 31 July 2021. Please join us for this free online Drawing Discussion: On Drawing Matter with the artists and curators on Wednesday 28 July at 6pm by registering for the event here. The recording of the event is available here.

Eleanor Bartlett, Lucinda Burgess and Carole Pearson all emphasize the nature and character of different kinds of matter, be it graphite, chalk, wax, tar, paper, wood or metallic paint. They are also united by a limited colour palette and frequent use of line. This exhibition is an exploration into the expanded field of drawing, blurring the boundaries between sculpture, painting, architecture and drawing. This long-planned exhibition, is curated at Drawing Projects UK by Fiona Cassidy and Gary Sangster, and accompanied by an exhibition leaflet with a text by Debbie Hillyerd, Director of Education at Hauser & Wirth.

Eleanor Bartlett had no formal training and began her practice in 2010, drawing from natural forms. She progressed to painting and making sculpture and has shown her work nationally and in Europe. She has installed sculpture in Salisbury and Wells Cathedrals, and has exhibited in other public spaces and museums. Her work is held in private and public collections. Eleanor Bartlett works with industrial materials, describing elemental forms painted with tar and wax. The behaviour of the materials has an important implication on the direction of the work, but ultimately the work has to have the power to persuade.

Lucinda Burgess trained and taught as a painter, but then became involved with oriental philosophy and spent time in a monastic setting. Continuing a pattern of dramatic change, she went on to become a successful landscape designer. Since 2010 she has resumed her Fine Art practice, working primarily in three dimensions. Her background in oriental philosophy and landscape design has led to a fascination with the raw elemental qualities of materials, and informs a sculptural practice that accentuates the reality of constant change, undermining the idea of a fixed thing, object or identity. Her art has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including among others Nunnery Gallery, Beaux Arts Gallery, Jerwood Space, Mall Galleries and the Arndean Gallery in London, Newlyn Art Gallery, Municipal Gallery in Athens, The Tapestry in Liverpool, Aesthetica Art Prize in York and the travelling Jerwood Drawing Prize. She will be exhibiting at Bartha Contemporary and RaumX in London, October 2021.

Carole Pearson lives in Bath. She worked in museum collections before studying for a degree in Ceramics, followed by a Masters in Fine Art. She works mostly on paper and also makes three-dimensional objects. Her selection of materials is low-tech, utilising found and everyday objects. Her thinking reflects her childhood growing up on farms in North Yorkshire and her strong connection with the land. She looks for marks in the landscape, focusing on impressions and traces that objects have left behind.

Fiona Cassidy is a freelance curator, and co-founder of Found Outdoors, an outdoor education and arts space set in 54 acres of mature woods and grassland on the edge of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. She began her varied career with a chemistry degree and later undertook a Fine Art Sculpture degree and an MA in Curatorial Practice. Since 2009 she has curated 70+ exhibitions in arts centres across the South West, and was also Director of Screenology Film School in Bristol from 2017-2019.

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.

Visiting Drawing Matter at Drawing Projects UK: The exhibition is presented in The Entrance Hall, Chief Secretary's Office Gallery, Long Gallery and Project Room 1. The full exhibition will be open to the public by pre-booked tickets on Fridays and Saturdays via Eventbrite (free entry) during the exhibition from 12noon to 4pm. The Entrance Hall and Long Gallery are open from Tuesday to Saturday 8am to 3pm when Miranda's Coffee Shop is open.