Past Exhibitions

Gestural, Reflective & Inquiring Tales: a painting exhibition bridging Europe - in Dundee

Geraldine Swayne artwork installed at Drawing Projects Uk in Scotland. Photo: Drawing Projects UK

Join us at our new venue in Dundee for Gestural, Reflective and Inquiring Tales: a painting exhibition bridging Europe, which will be on show from 13 September to 12 October 2024, Wednesday to Sunday, 12noon to 4pm - ticketed entry only. Book your free ticket to see the exhibition here and find out about the accompanying events programme here.

Drawing Projects UK in Scotland can be found on the corner of West Bell Street & Constitution Road in Dundee, postcode: DD1 1EX.

Gestural Reflective and Inquiring Tales (G.R.I.T.), features fourteen painters from the UK and Europe, and explores how gesture and its physicality in contemporary painting engage both the maker and the viewer. With international contributors, G.R.I.T. aims to bridge a conversation about painting across Europe, and the exhibition will be shown first in Berlin, Germany, and then in Dundee, Scotland. Through these two iterations, the project aims to develop a model for sustainable artistic exchange. Beyond the exhibitions, a public program and a symposium will be held in each location, and it is intended to produce a publication.

G.R.I.T. assembles a group of fourteen painters, and the exhibition illuminates the ways painting relates to its viewers by focusing on the idea of bodily engagement through gesture. The titular acronym hints at the complexity of this relation: gestural, reflective, inquiring tales. The artworks in this show invite contemplation and, at the same time, reveal an experience that mirrors the process of making a painting. The works provoke thought and exert a pull upon viewers. They demand commitment. However, G.R.I.T. does not attempt to oversimplify the mystery of the relationships that painting engages. In his 2019 essay collection, The Observer Effect: On Contemporary Painting, the critic and poet Barry Schwabsky speaks about this engagement. “(We) should not overlook,” writes Schwabsky, “what gives painting its importance to art, is that it derives from the essence (body) of both the maker and the viewer.” Accordingly, G.R.I.T. centres the presence of the artists’ process, as found in the raw and immediate marks which physically and psychologically resonate with the viewers.

Artists: Angove, Jacopo Dal Bello, Jenny Eden, Rao Fu, Ina Gerken, Alena Hil, Erika Krause, Eglė Otto, Alex Roberts, Geraldine Swayne, Anita Taylor, Henry Ward, Waldemar Zimbelmann, Michaela Zimmer. Curator: Alex Roberts is a British painter based in Berlin and Dundee. www.alexroberts.com

Our Dundee Venue: Drawing Projects UK is dedicated to research and development, production and presentation of exhibitions, events and workshops in drawing and contemporary art, and operates on a non-profit basis. Established in 2009, to deliver the Trinity Buoy Wharf (then Jerwood) Drawing Prize annual open exhibition, amongst other projects, the Drawing Projects UK centre in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, opened in 2015. This new centre for Drawing Projects UK will fully open to the public in 2025. Located on the corner of West Bell Street and Constitution Road, the former Bell Street Public Hall will form the exhibition and project space for Drawing Projects UK. With its entrance on Constitution Road, this heritage space provides an atmospheric venue for the G.R.I.T. exhibition which is seen in natural light, and is a pilot exhibition as we develop our new space.

G.R.I.T. will be an accompanied by an education programme, delivered with partner venues, and includes the:

- Exhibition Tour with the Artists & Curator at Drawing Projects UK, more information and booking here
- Symposium on Saturday 14 September from 11am to 6pm, held at the University of Dundee, more information and booking here
- Closing event with exhibiting artists, Michaela Zimmer, with Jenny Smith and Nicole Tait at Freebird Studio, more information and booking here.

Further information about the exhibition and events programme is available here, and on Instagram: @painting_grit

Artworks and press photos are available upon request. For press enquiries please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

-ENDS-

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 - Exhibition News

We had hoped to be able present the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition at our new venue in Scotland; however, this has not been possible as our renovation works are more extensive than anticipated, and the 2023 exhibition is too large to present at our venue in Wiltshire. We will be launching the documentary films of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023, made at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London in September 2023, at Drawing Projects UK in January 2024 accompanied by a programme of online Drawing Discussions.

Please see our Upcoming Exhibitions page to find out more about the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023 exhibition, which will be on show at the following venues:

- TheGallery, Arts University Bournemouth from 2 February to 16 April 2024;

- The Arts Institute, Plymouth University from 4 May to 29 June 2024;

- Turnpike, Wigan from 13 July to 14 September 2024.

A fully illustrated publication, an education pack, and public engagement programmes accompany the exhibition and tour.

#TBWDP23 #TrinityBuoyWharfDrawingPrize #CelebratingDrawing #DrawingMatters

OCTOGENARIAN DANCE: Yvonne Crossley - 23 September to 18 November 2023

Yvonne Crossley, Octogenarian Dance no11, 2022

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 by appointment, special events, and each Saturday from 7 October, with the exception of 4 November.

Octogenarian Dance is a recent body of work that both celebrates the positive elements of old age and recognises the stigma inherent in the “catastrophe” of approaching the later years of life, by an artist who is unashamedly physically old and long in life-story herself.

As we age, a multiplicity of selves proliferates, over and through time. Ageing “is a multiple, ambiguous, and contradictory process, which provides us – continuously and simultaneously – with images of past, present, lost, embodied and imagined selves” (Helen Moglen, 2008 Studies in Gender and Sexuality)

These possibilities result in a dislocation for the ageing self, residing in the tensions between the person in the mirror, the person in our minds at different points in time, and the body that others see. The pieces brought together in the exhibition Octogenarian Dance focus on this aspect of the ageing body in modern society, attentive to the way in which age, life, and memory intersect.

We are between exhibitions and we are delighted to showcase a single drawing, Divulge, 2006, by Anita Taylor, at Drawing Projects UK from 11 February to 4 April 2023.

Trinity Buoy Wharf Working Drawing Award 2022 - on show from 8 April to 1 July 2023

Ben Johnson, Mexico Airport Working Drawing

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to be able to present the 21 drawings selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Working Drawing Award 2022 from 8 April to 1 July 2023.

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Working Drawing Award is a special category within the overall Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize exhibition and awards that celebrates the role of drawing within architecture, design and making. The Working Drawing Award 2022 was selected by Peter Clegg, Architect & Senior Partner, Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios; Niall Hobhouse, Collector, Writer & Trustee, Drawing Matter; Tania Kovats, Artist, Writer, Professor of Drawing & Making and Programme Director of MFA Drawing at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design at the University of Dundee; and Daniel McAuliffe, Education Director (Hubs) of The Prince’s Foundation. Almost 400 entries by 135 candidates were received for this special category of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2022.

We are delighted to present this solo exhibition - Emergency! by Sarah Casey at Drawing Projects UK from 12 November to 4 February 2023.

Emergency! is an exhibition of new work by Sarah Casey developed in response to glacial archaeology. In 2018, at Valais Museums, Switzerland, Sarah began drawing artefacts that have emerged from alpine glaciers as the ice in which they have been preserved for 50, 500 or 5000 years is now melting at unprecedented rates. This glacial archaeology embodies a position of extreme precarity: these rare and valuable finds preserve important knowledge about the human past, yet insight comes at the cost of environmental change and threatened futures. Moreover, the artefacts themselves, once released from their frozen slumber, will rapidly decay and disintegrate when exposed. The Emergency! exhibition aims to explore this precarity asking how might processes of drawing – with its use of marking and erasure, presence and absence – negotiate these tensions and find new ways of thinking through loss and change? The drawings in the exhibition are made by trapping dust in wax and so, like the archaeology they depict, are contingent on their environmental conditions to survive – if they get exposed to heat, they will melt away. This research was developed through a Henry Moore Institute Research Fellowship 2021 and undertaken in dialogue with Valais History Museum, Switzerland.

Gary Lawrence, My Room in Kos, felt pen, acrylic on paper, 2021

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to present a solo exhibition of drawings by Gary Lawrence from 13 August to 29 October 2022.

The exhibition includes several large drawings and, as the first solo exhibition of Gary Lawrence’s work since 2013, provides a unique opportunity to see a series of his distinctive drawings together. The drawings featured in the exhibition all focus on the experience of travel. Over recent years, images and holiday snapshots from Greece have provided Gary Lawrence’s main inspiration and form a starting point for his drawings that transpose these initial references to travel, experience, and memory. While the drawings clearly reference photographic sources, other references from medieval painting, news media, postcards, fridge magnets, popular culture, and personal experiences, are woven into these complex, multi-layered drawings. References to artists from all periods find their way into this work, with images from 1280 just as exciting and useful to the artist as something found on TV or YouTube in 2022.

Iain R. Webb, Jean Paul Gaultier Autumn/Winter Collection 1991

Drawing Projects UK is proud to present the exhibition - Iain R. Webb - DRAWING FASHION: sketchbooks from the edge of the catwalk - from 4 June to 6 August 2022.

Throughout Iain R. Webb's longstanding and influential career in the fashion industry, he has drawn from the edge of the catwalk as a form of note-taking. These sketchbooks form a significant visual record of the vast number of influential fashion shows covered by Iain R. Webb, and feature his notational drawings of the collections of ground-breaking fashion designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen, Miuccia Prada, Comme des Garcons, and many more, as they were first revealed on the season's catwalks. The exhibition provides an insight into the fashion industry and forms a record of the last four decades of fashion history. Celebrating drawing as a means of recording, remembering, and communicating, sits at the heart of this exhibition which, simultaneously, celebrates and reveals the workings of the fashion industry.

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2021 at Cooper Gallery, March 2022

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2021 exhibition is now on tour and on show at Cooper Gallery in Dundee from 21 March to 16 April 2022. The exhibition of 114 drawings by 99 drawing practitioners is free to visit - from Monday to Saturday, 11am to 4pm - and information on how to book is available here. There is a programme of events alongside the exhibition - Drawn to Dundee - convened by Tania Kovats, Professor of Drawing & Making, and Alex Roberts, Lecturer in Drawing at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design at the University of Dundee. Information on the exhibition and events programme can be found here.

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2021 exhibition will be presented at Drawing Projects UK from 8 January to 5 March 2022. The exhibition of 114 drawings by 99 drawing practitioners is free to visit - from Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 4pm. We are operating a booking system for our visitors throughout the exhibition - f urther visitor information and the visitor booking system can be found here by clicking on this link. The presentation of the exhibition and associated events programme at Drawing Projects UK is kindly supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Our exhibition - A Closer Look: Lewis Chamberlain, Esen Kaya, Hamish Young - is on show at Drawing Projects UK from 23 November to 24 December 2021. The is the latest In Focus exhibition held in The Entrance Hall at Drawing Projects UK while we complete the refurbishment of our gallery and education spaces. As the title implies, the drawings in the exhibition invite you to look closely and to explore the subjects, content and forms of these engaging and collectable works.

Pauline Scott-Garrett, Fragments of Wealth, 2021, Collagraph on Fabriano Tiepolo paper, 56 x 75cm

From 9 October to 20 November 2021, we will be presenting Fragments of Wealth, a solo exhibition of prints and collages by Pauline Scott-Garrett, in The Entrance Hall at Drawing Projects UK.

Lovers (in the King's Chamber), Anita Taylor

On show in The Entrance Hall at Drawing Projects UK is a selection of drawings from the extensive A mon seul desir series by Anita Taylor. The exhibition is on from 14 September until 2 October 2021.

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize at Trinity Buoy Wharf London

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020 installed at Cooper Gallery, University of Dundee

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020 Exhibition and Awards Announcement at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London from 9 to 22 January 2021.

While our exhibition programme is once again on hold due to the new lockdown, we are thrilled that Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020 is now on show at Cooper Gallery in Dundee from 13 November to 19 December 2020, Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 4pm. Free tickets available at Eventbrite.

Isobel Rock, Grief 1 - Leap from the Island

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to present the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020 exhibition from Friday 2 October to Saturday 31 October 2020. This is the first opportunity to see the 2020 exhibition of 71 drawings by 56 drawing practitioners selected by Sophia Yadong Hao, Ian McKeever RA and Frances Morris with a special display of working drawings selected by Sir Ian Blatchford, Piers Gough CBE RA and Sophie McKinlay. The exhibition will be open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 4pm by pre-booked ticket.

Mikey Cuddihy, Complacent Investors, Pandemic Pillows Series, 2020

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to feature the Pandemic Pillows by Mikey Cuddihy during lockdown. We have been in discussions with Mikey about an Open to Draw project for some time, and look forward to presenting her work in the real in our future exhibition and residency programmes when we are able to re-open our doors to the public. In the meantime, please read on to find out more about the Pandemic Pillows from Mikey herself, and about the artist. We hope you will enjoy this, the first of our featured artist's lockdown projects!

Drawing Matter - Eleanor Bartlett, Lucinda Burgess, Carole Pearson will be on show from 26 June to 31 July 2021 at Drawing Projects UK in Trowbridge, Wiltshire. A timed entry ticket must be booked in advance to attend the exhibition. This exhibition was originally planned for March & April 2020, but was postponed due to the global pandemic and public health restrictions, so we are delighted to finally be sharing the exhibition and much new work made by the artists during lockdown.

We are delighted that the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2019 at the Leicester Gallery at De Montfort University will re-open at midday on Saturday 29 August until Saturday 26 September 2020. Open Monday to Saturday from midday to 5pm, please check the Leicester Gallery website for new visitation guidance.

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2019 is on show in The Chainstore at Trinity Buoy Wharf from 18 January to 1 February 2020, and is open daily from 11am to 4pm, and is accompanied by an events programme.

Supported by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize is selected from original drawings and led by its founding Director, Professor Anita Taylor, since 1994. The Prize has an established reputation as the foremost national exhibition of drawing practice and is known for both its promotion of artists and makers who draw, and its championing of the role and value of drawing more widely.

The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2019 is currently on show at The Salisbury Museum from 12 October 2019 until 11 January 2020. Please check The Salisbury Museum website for opening hours and further information and events here. This is the only tour venue for the 2019 exhibition in the South West.

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to present the exhibition Thinking Graphite by Sarah Duyshart, Janine Hall, Emma Louise Hollaway, Caroline Holt-Wilson, Jo Lane, Ellis Scheer and Charmaine Watkiss from 14 December 2019 to 1 February 2020. Please note that the gallery will be closed from 28 December 2019 to 17 January 2020 and see the opening hours information below.

Drawing Projects UK is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Ian Chamberlain, Monuments Remain, from 16 November to 7 December 2019.

Between the Sunny and the Opaque is a collaborative, site-specific drawing project made by Greig Burgoyne and Lucy O’Donnell as an Open to Draw project at Drawing Projects UK.

The West of England Festival of Textiles - WEFT 2019 - organised by Trowbridge Museum will be presented in the Project Space at Drawing Projects UK from 6 to 28 September 2019.

Drawing Projects UK is pleased to present In Focus: Paintings by Robin Heaton from 20 July to 25 August 2019.

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to present Drawing Out The Canal by Simon Woolham from 12 to 26 October 2019.

C+E Aligned IV & C+F Paired I, George Meyrick, 2017

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to present Shaped Space, a solo exhibition by George Meyrick, from 31 August to 5 October 2019.

Anita Taylor, Pause, Charcoal on Paper, 38 x 28cm, 2019

Drawing Projects UK is pleased to present In Focus: Drawings by Anita Taylor from 1 July to 26 August 2019.

Drawing Projects UK is pleased to present In Between Sea and Shore, the annual Bath Spa Porthleven Prize exhibition. The exhibition opens on the evening of Thursday 2 May 2019, from 6-8pm, and continues until 18 May 2019.

In Between Sea and Shore includes work by Poppy Briggs, Lyon Hansen, Alex Mah, Mariana Marcelino, Katie Sims, James Thornton and Deborah Westmancoat. The exhibition presents the work of seven Bath Spa University students who each were awarded a fully-funded artist residency at the Old Lifeboat House art studio in Porthleven, Cornwall, which they undertook in May 2018 as part of the Bath Spa Porthleven Prize.

From 15 to 22 February 2019, there will be a selection of drawings on show, by artists and makers involved in the Drawing Projects UK programmes, in the Gallery and the Entrance Hall.

In the Long Gallery we will be displaying drawings by Saranjit Birdi as part of his Mapping Bones drawing project and performance.

Simon Head, Buffalo Yoga 01.01, 2018, paper, iron oxide, graphite, 64.5cm x 85.5cm

We are delighted that the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2018 will be at Drawing Projects UK from 2 March until 26 April 2019.

The Trinity Buoy Drawing Prize 2018 exhibition includes 69 drawings by 67 artists and makers, selected from an overall submission of 1,711 works from across the UK by Nigel Hall RA, artist; Megan Piper, contemporary art dealer; and Dr Chris Stephens, Director of The Holburne Museum in Bath.

Mairead McClean, Untitled, collage, 2018

Stockpile is our Christmas exhibition. Winter is here and we have a selection of art and artefacts for you to enjoy. Opening on Saturday 8 December from 10am to 5pm, with regular opening hours on Saturdays from 12-4pm and Sundays from 11am-1pm, by appointment, and during events.

Stockpile showcases work by a range of artists and makers, including our studio residents, will include ceramics, collage, drawings, objects, paintings, prints and sculpture. Artists and makers will include: Michael Angove, Eleanor Bartlett, Hannah Beickhorasani, Mike Collier, Alice Couttoupes, Yvonne Crossley, Gerry Davies, Neill Fuller, Kendra Gare, Jin Eui Kim, Mairead McClean, Carole Pearson, Sandra Porter, Alex Roberts, Andrew Roberts, Pauline Scott Garrett, Philippa Sutherland, Anita Taylor, Sally Taylor, Quilos and the Windmill.

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to be presenting - A Dawn Chorus. Singing the World: Mimesis and Birdsong - an exhibition by Mike Collier from 26 October to 24 November 2018. Exhibition open Fridays and Saturdays 1pm to 4pm, and by prior arrangement at other times. A Drawing Discussion: A Dawn Chorus with Mike Collier will be held on Saturday 24 November at 4pm, please book here.

From 14 July to 4 August 2018 the exhibition Around the World will be on show at Drawing Projects UK, in association with the Active Trowbridge Annual Festival and Explore Art Trowbridge events on Saturday 14 July.

Featuring a range of artists and makers from around the world making work in response to people, place and events across the world. Works by Alice Couttoupes, Gary Lawrence, Sandra Porter, Tim Vyner and others will enable visitors to reflect on a range of perspectives and artistic responses to place, experience and identity. As an act and activity, drawing intrinsically enables us all to visualise ideas, and to see the world anew.

[L-R] Laylah Ali, Bedwyr Williams, Margaret Kilgallen

Drawing Projects UK presents the exhibition Consequences from 17 March 2018 - 28 April 2018, a collection of drawings, photography, prints and paintings that reflect on the notion of consequence, whether this be chance, intentional, inadvertent, deliberate, playful or fortuitous. Featuring works by Laylah Ali, Yvonne Crossley, Richard Dunn, Peter de Francia, Ilya Kabakov, Margaret Kilgallen, Christopher James and Bedwyr Williams. These images represent, in different sometimes oblique, sometimes difficult, even harrowing ways, critical moments in narratives, relationships, single events, and identity.

Runs to 3 February 2018

On show from 16 December 2017 to 3 February 2018, the exhibition, Line Up, features work by Jin Eui Kim, Gary Lawrence, Sandra Porter and Stephanie Syjuco. This collection of works use line as a principle element of the work, whether this is in ceramics, printmaking or drawing.

16 August - 6 October 2018

The final showing of Jerwood Drawing Prize 2017 will be at Drawing Projects UK from 16 August to 6 October 2018. Selected by Dr David Dibosa, Helen Legg and Michael Simpson from over 2,800 original drawings, 69 drawings by 65 artists will be on display. The exhibition is open to the public from Thursday - Saturday, 12noon to 4pm. Free entry.

Mandy Bonnell, Eloise Butler’s Wildflower Garden, 2013, artist’s book.

5 May - 30 June 2018

From 5 May - 30 June 2018, Drawing Projects UK is pleased to present the exhibition, From the Ground - Mandy Bonnell & James Brooks, which includes an artist’s book by Mandy Bonnell, Eloise Butler's Wildflower Garden, and a number of works by James Brooks that explore the geography and geometry of civic spaces in towns and cities across Europe.

Opening times Saturdays 1-4pm, Sundays 11am to 1pm, and by appointment.

Our current exhibition, See View, features drawings, paintings, prints and artists’ books by Australian and British artists - Jelle van den Berg, Peter Burgess, Gerry Davies, Gary Lawrence, Mary Scott, Philippa Sutherland and Anita Taylor. Curated by Gary Sangster, the exhibition examines perceptions and observations of people, place and natural phenomena.

From the very beginning of his career drawing has been an integral part of Michael Pennie’s artistic output, enabling ideas to be recorded, interrogated and developed. The Drawings of Different Sizes exhibition brings together the best of Pennie’s recent drawings made during his tenure as Artist in Residence at Corsham Court. The exhibition at Drawing Projects UK has provided an opportunity at this stage of his career to showcase a developing preoccupation with drawing.

Peter Burgess, Spitfires, Cut Vinyl, 2017

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to present Greyscale an exhibition of works by five Australian artists - Peter Burgess, Julia Davis, Adrian Gebers, Pollyxenia Joannou and Lisa Jones - from 6 April until 6 May 2017.

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to present Flood Story, an exhibition of drawings by Gerry Davies from Thursday 9 March until Saturday 1 April 2017.

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to be hosting an exhibition by Elisa Alaluusua at Bridge House in Trowbridge from 9 February - 4 March 2017.

Drawing Projects UK is presenting an exhibition of drawings by Anita Taylor from 5 December 2016 to 27 January 2017.

Eleanor Bartlett Paintings & Drawings

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to be presenting an exhibition by Eleanor Bartlett from 5 November until 26 November 2016.

Andrew Grant, Drawings for Forest of Imagination 2016, Madagascar

Drawing Projects UK is delighted to present the drawings of Andrew Grant made for the Forest of Imagination, a four-day contemporary arts festival held in Bath in the successive years of 2014, 2015 and 2016.