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.

These two enigmatic graphic works from a larger series entitled Serial Consequences [2017] by Yvonne Crossley set the agenda and title for the exhibition. Their visual game is playful in intent and yet, on closer inspection, depicts mutating presences that traverse and bridge the two halves of a formal pictorial divide.  

Laylah Ali's print from her Drawing from the Typology series [2007] meticulously renders an ornately patterned black and white image of a character culled from an imaginary anthropology from a series that focusses on the myriad ways in which identity becomes manifest — through clothing, hairstyle, skin colour, physical attributes or abilities.

Richard Dunn's atmospheric genre paintings, Normal Picture (Typewriter) and Normal (Picture House and Gun) both from 1981, are carefully wrought meditations on psychological effects of objects and experience on our imagination. The deadpan quality of these unexplained 'still-life’ images, implies a sense of threat and a dark undercurrent of unspoken danger.

Peter de Francia’s drawings have a strong element of satire and caricature and strong social and political themes explored through myth and storytelling. He exposes the horror of man's treatment of man, but there are also intimations of aspirations for something better - a world of friendship and camaraderie and simple pleasures. Here, in this drawing from the 1990s, he depicts a painter trying to represent an idealised world, while terror and violence surround and pervade that quest.

Since the early 1990s, Russian-born Ilya & Emilia Kabakov have collaborated to make complex installations that combine references to history, art, literature and philosophy. Much of their work has revolved around the creation of elaborate fictional characters and situations, with an interest in storytelling and fantasy underpinning their work. This print reproduces one of Ilya Kabakov's preparatory drawings for The House of Dreams at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 2005 and, and is loosely based on the gallery's architecture, depicting an idealised vision of the installation. 

Margaret Kilgallen’s work reflects a variety of influences, including the increasingly rare art of hand-painted signs with elements of American folk art and mural painting. Half-Cocked is a powerful example of Killgallen’s dynamic multi-cultured fusion of typography and narrative. Describing Kilgallen’s work, critic Roberta Smith, said, “The overall result was impure Americana, a slightly acidic nostalgia that evoked sideshows, tramp art and old travel posters with infusions of feminist wit.”

Ferris Wheel and Corpse, New Delhi, India [1995] is from a series of photographs by Christopher James that document a period of travel in India, and depicts a melancholic and haunting scene of death and play, side by side. 

Bedwyr Williams is interested in the absolute worst-case scenarios and the people that get caught up in them. Echt [2014], a major immersive installation, included a film depicting a dystopian future in which a fast-track feudal system has left the country divided among new chieftains. In this new world, where status is based on conspicuous consumption, hoarders are kings. These accumulators of objects and junk have set up their new courts in former dancehalls and nightclubs, and are accompanied by a host of Williams’ acutely observed characters. ECHT 1 and ECHT 5 were made for Northern Print in an edition of 30. 

Please contact us if you would like more information about the exhibition and opening times.