Exhibitions/Events:
1998 Chapman Gallery/GlassBox Gallery, University of Salford
2000 Bonington Gallery, Nottingham
2001 Holden Gallery, Manchester
Date:
1998 – 2001
In the mid 1990s I started a doctoral project Painting and Narrative Structure – A Study of the Relationships between the Process of Painting and Narrative Structure (unfinished) which introduced the use of diagrammatic drawing as a means of displaying the analysis of an interactive viewing of paintings. This strategy was developed initially through encounters with Jackson Pollock paintings and then with the work of Jonathan Lasker. It was then extended to consider aspects of personal works and then applied, more speculatively, as a feature of a critical engagement with the world – social and natural. This approach was first applied to works from the late 1990s.
The Mute Presence of Painting was a painting/mixed media work in ‘Transdialogues’, a collaborative exhibition project with Anne Grebby and Leif EC Leibenschutz. It involved a mixture of drawings and collage studies exhibited alongside a “live broadcast” of a small abstract painting that was exhibited in a gallery space about a mile away. The relationships set up between these screen-based presentations and the glass display cases containing objects selected and arranged by the collaborating artists was an important feature of the exhibition and initiated an interest in collaborative practices.
Les Parapluies de Manchester was an exhibition of staff teaching in the painting area in the Manchester School of Art and included three interconnected works: P/P 1, P/P 2, P/P 3: Mondrian’s Nod. These were displayed as an arrangement of small abstract paintings, found photographic images and diagrammatic wall drawings which demonstrated the activity of reflective thinking/looking.
The Book is Losing Its Leaves was another collaboration with Anne Grebby included in the ‘Life Class’ project in Manchester. It was made up of a Grebby corner based painting called ‘The Book is Losing Its Leaves’, along with a large diagrammatic wall drawing that depicted critical reflections on the interactive dynamics between the Grebby painting and the framing institutional space.
See also Selected Writings: Narrativity and a Sense of Presentness in Abstract Painting (1998)
Trans-Dialogues
Bonington
Holden
