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-