Marking Space: A Drawing Research Lab
Summer Research Residency
June 9 – August 22, 2014
Tim Messeiller, Santiago Tavera, Christine Garvey, Matthew-Robin Nye, Cameron Forbes, Beth Frey
Project Description
SKOOL 2014 offers a paid 10-week internship to a temporary administrative team. This program is addressed to full-time university students. By transforming the centre into a learning venue, the program aims to provide the time, space and resources required to acquire organizational experience in a professional artistic context. Under the supervision of a mentor, participants will conceive, plan, and organize programming or research projects on a particular issue in contemporary art.
This multi-faceted artist residency will examine contemporary issues in drawing, transforming Skol into an active place for learning, making, and collaborating.
Historically drawing has been primarily recognized as a preparatory tool, an aid to planning and making within other mediums. In recent years, there has been a shift, presenting a new found interest in drawing as an agile and expressive medium in its own right. Drawing has been investigated as a performative tool, a medium for mapping, a collaborative action, and a critical form of research. Throughout the summer, the SKOOL team will examine their own diverse approaches to drawing through activities including discussions, workshops, and a publication.
Schedule
The Drawing research lab will be open to the public on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 12-4pm. All workshop and events are on Thursday from 5-7pm.
June 19th – Workshop 1: Shadow Mapping : Light in Space
June 26th – Workshop 2: Translating Projections – 2D/3D digital and analogue
July 3rd – Workshop 3: Body, Mark, and Skill: Body as Drawing Device
July 10th – Workshop 4: Homage and Observation: Enacting Sight
July 17th – Workshop 5: Collected Images: Collage and Drawing
July 24th – Workshop 6: Desire Lines : Performing Blueprints
July 31st – Workshop 7: What Happens to a Line When it Leaves the Page?
August 7th – Debate: Drawing the Line: Politics, Pedagogy & Trace Making
August 14th – Closing Event: Surprise Party Finissage + Publication Launch
WORKSHOP 1: SHADOW MAPPING – LIGHT IN SPACE Led by Cameron Forbes
The workshop will begin with a demonstration of techniques in navigation that traditionally use the sun, moon, and stars. We will then imagine ways to use and manipulate these approaches to share perceptions of space through drawing.
WORKSHOP 2: TRANSLATING PROJECTIONS – 2D/3D DIGITAL AND ANALOGUE Led by Cameron Forbes and Santiago Tavera
Projection is a term used in cartography to refer to the systematic process of translating the 3D space of the globe into the 2D plane of a map. Inspired by the concept of translation, technology will be explored as a method to draw in space. We will use plexiglass, mirrors, projectors, live feed camera’s, and other tools to experiment with translations between the 2 dimensional and the 3 dimensional.
WORKSHOP 3: BODY, MARK & SKILL: BODY AS A DRAWING DEVICE
Led by Beth Frey
In this collaborative workshop, we will examine drawing as an embodied gesture and explore the corporeal relationship between seeing and mark-making. Looking historically to how artists have used the body to draw, and considering it in a performative capacity, we will collaborate on a number of drawing exercises. This workshop will engage with nonconventional drawing materials to activate the space through movement and gestured mark-making.
WORKSHOP 4: Homage and Observation: Enacting Sight Led by Christine Garvey
With an interest in the relationship between perception and mark-making, this workshop will explore practices of drawing from observation, paying attention to how varying conditions affect the way we make marks. Using well-known contemporary and historic imagery as a reference point, participants will observe these images under shifting conditions of light, sound, and focus, translating these perceptions into a marked record of their experience.
WORKSHOP 5: Collected Images: Collage and Drawing led by Christine Garvey
Historically collage has offered artists a means to directly engage with the visual refuse of their time. Through examining, re-organizing, and manipulating this imagery, collage presents a language through which to imagine and realize alternate worlds and relations. Using found imagery and collaborative exercises, this workshop will explore collage and its relationship to drawing and the imagination.
WORKSHOP 6: DESIRE LINES: PERFORMING BLUEPRINTS Led by Matthew-Robin Nye
Drawing is as a trace of desire, an orientation towards representation. Phenomenologically speaking, a straight line, the city grid, or a perfectly vertical structure is a heteronormative structure. These are all examples of an orientation towards something, with little meandering along the way. Over the course of this week, this workshop will explore Desire Lines as an artistic and design methodology, banishing the straight line in favour of lines of whimsy, caprice and desire.
WORKSHOP 7: WHAT HAPPENS TO A LINE WHEN IT LEAVES THE PAGE? THE LINE IN VIRTUAL SPACE
Led by Matthew-Robin Nye
A line is never just what you see on the page; a line is a representation of the moments before it existed, the moment after it was traced, and every line that it could be and most like is outside of its immediate representation. Following the Desire Lines workshop, What Happens to a Line When It Leaves the Page? will explore the potential of a line outside of its immediate representation on the page, wall, or screen – through philosophy, performance, and yes, even drawing.
DEBATE: DRAWING THE LINE All Artists Present
To summarize questions and ideas that have arisen throughout the scheduled activities, Drawing the Line will examine current issues in drawing in the form of a moderated round-table debate.
SURPRISE PARTY Curated by Timothèe Messeiller
Through this publicly-engaged drawing exchange, participants are invited to come to the gallery to draw works they’d like realized in three dimensions. This collection of drawings will be brought into sculptural form, by participating artist Tim Messeiller, illiciting a conversation between the languages of drawing and sculpture.
