We are artists who met as PhD researchers while individually undertaking research in different areas of drawing – each sharing an interest in process-based and expanded methods of working. In addition to our individual artistic practices, since 2008 we have collaborated on a range of performance drawing projects that address the relationship between the body and presence, and time and space through working with graphite and charcoal, light, sound, and animation. We have exhibited and lectured internationally on the topic of performance drawing and have curated programmes and workshops. Working together collaboratively in this way we aim to contribute to the creative process underpinned by generations of feminist art practice and defy traditional notions of authorship.
This book was important for us because it was the first time the live method of drawing was first described as performance drawing(s).
The term ‘performance drawing’ first appeared in the subtitle of Catherine de Zegher’s Drawing Papers 20: Performance Drawings, in particular with reference to Alison Knowles and Elena del Rivero. This volume accompanied a series of five solo exhibitions at The Drawing Center, New York (2001) of work that "explored the interrelation of drawing and performance." Since then, performance drawing has compellingly become an operational term – a trope and a thread of thinking to describe the process dedicated to broadening the field of drawing through resourceful practices and cross-disciplinary influence, including dance, audio, moving image, and technology. It made a big impact on our research.
As today’s artists are shifting boundaries of genres, creative debates are opened up and generate transformative methodologies. This book was instrumental for us, in instituting and revealing the relationship between drawing and performing, Butler, and de Zegher’s catalogue, demonstrates artworks at the forefront of the progressively vibrant and forward-thinking approach to art that contributes to the expanded field of drawing.
On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century explores the radical evolution of drawing that took place during the last century and through to the present day, as numerous artists subjected the traditional concepts of the medium to a critical examination. In a revolutionary departure from the institutional definition of drawing, and from reliance on paper as the fundamental support material, artists instead pushed the line across the plane and into real space, expanding the medium in relation to gesture and form and connecting it with painting, sculpture, photography, film and dance. Published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of…
At times, it may seem apparent that successive generations of artists reinvent the wheel and explore performance drawing across a range of disciplines; it was in particular, Tania Kovat’s writing in The Drawing Book, that gave us the broad contextualization of things – it seemed to reach into diverse yet significantly relevant references of historical predecessors that excited us. The book is complete with brilliant replications of artworks and quotes by a collection of artists.
The works in "The Drawing Book", by artists, architects, sculptors, scientists, filmmakers and thinkers of all descriptions, attest to the versatility and immediacy of drawing. From first thoughts to finely wrought, elaborate artworks, from the lightest sketch in pencil to bold, gallery-wall installations, the medium is shown as an essential vehicle for creativity. The recent prominence of artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Ellen Gallagher, and a host of others who use drawing as a final means of expression, is addressed in both the works shown and essays by curators Kate Macfarlane and Katharine Stout,…
A scholarly / anthology resource, this book is a collection of ideas around a theme that made a big impact on us and our approach to writing. We love this book. The book is a collection of writings that provide much debate for researchers in the field discussing themes regarding live art; the book brings together artists, theorists, and historians as contributors and addresses disciplines, such as dance, theatre, action painting and expanded cinema, as forms of live art that today’s artists are inspired by.
Bringing together contributors from dance, theatre, visual studies and art history, Perform, Repeat, Record addresses the conundrum of how live art is positioned within history. Set apart from other art forms in that it may never be performed in precisely the same way twice, ephemeral artwork exists both at the time of its staging and long after in the memories of its spectators and their testimonies, as well as in material objects, visual media and text. These multiple occurrences and iterations offer new critical possibilities for thinking and writing the histories of performance. Among the artists, theorists and historians who…
Throughout this book, the artist and editor, Avis Newman converses with the editor Catherine de Zegher about the practical process of drawing. This approach was also important and also most impactful. In the book, de Zegher asks Newman "What happens in the space between the gesture and its landing on the page?" And we love all conversations around the artist’s “doing” and “thinking." Following this conversation, the book gives the reader a window into how the drawer is thinking in the process of making and illuminates a link between performance and drawing by revealing how a drawing is performative as it comes into the world.
This work presents a selection of over one hundred important works from the Tate Collection, from William Blake to Andy Warhol, selected by the British artist Avis Newman. The presentation of rarely-seen drawings by so many major artists will make fresh and startling connections between their work and give new insights into their creative processes.
A primer for artists interested in performance drawing. The book features a wide range of artists involved in the expanded field of drawing, establishing performance drawing as a vibrant art movement that has been progressively burgeoning since 1945. Each chapter focuses on a different perspective of performance drawing. Marking: Line and body in time and space, Physicality: Running as drawing, Communication: Directives and/or instructions that promote the activity of drawing, Conjuring: The gift of a surprise, Illuminating: Live mark-making through projected light. While embedded in ephemerality and immediacy, the themes encompass body and energy, time and motion, light and space, imagined and observed, demonstrating how drawing can act as a performative tool.
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
