Collective And Collaborative Drawing In Contemporary Practice

Whilst both collective and collaborative drawing is being widely explored internationally, both within and beyond educational institutions, there is surprisingly little serious research published on the topic. This realisation led to the first international Drawing Conversations Symposium, accompanied by the Drawn Conversations Exhibition at Coventry University, UK, in December 2015. The two events drew a strong and global response, and brought together a wide range of participants, including academics, artists, researchers, designers, architects and doctoral students. This book considers what happens, and how, when people draw together either in the form of a collaboration, or through a collective process. The contributions here serve to establish the field of collective and collaborative drawing as distinct from the types of drawing undertaken by artists, designers, and architects within a professional context. The volume covers conversations through the act of drawing, collaborative drawing, drawing communities, and alternative drawing collaborations.

Building on the success of the first volume in this series of research on collective and collaborative drawing, this book’s key themes are linked through the concepts of body, space, and place. The location of the body in art has always been central, but the exploration of it here, in relation to place and space, uncovers a wide range of exciting and different contexts, relationships and materials. Space is examined through the practice and theorisation of drawing, through the ongoing artistic practices of the authors, and the writings of Berger and Derrida in relation to making, viewing and understanding the drawing process. Place is examined through unique approaches to considering drawing, through multiple consecutive and site-specific places, through place as a changing and temporal site, and through the idea of the ‘non-place’. The contributors in this volume include academics, artists, dancers, researchers, designers, and architects from across the globe.

Artists have worked from home for many reasons, including care duties, financial or political constraints, or availability and proximity to others. Exploring how the home became a distinct site of artistic practice from the beginning of the 20th century, and the meaning of 'home' for artists today, this book explores the traditions and developments of the home studio as concept and space. Using examples from across Europe and the Anglophone world between the mid-20th century and the present, each chapter considers the different circumstances for working at home, the impact on the creative lives of the artists, their identities as artists and on the work itself, and how, sometimes, these were projected and promoted through photographs and the media. The book comprises full-length chapters by artists, architects, art and design historians, each of whom bring different perspectives to the issues, interwoven with short interviews with artists to enrich and broaden the debates. At a time when individual relationships to home environments have been radically altered, The Artist at Home considers why some artists in previous decades either needed to or chose to work from home, producing work of vitality and integrity. Tracing this long tradition into the present, the book will provide a deeper understanding of how the home studio has affected the practices and identity of artists working in different countries, and in different circumstances, from the mid-20th century to the present.

Collaboration in the arts is no longer a conscious choice to make a deliberate artistic statement, but instead a necessity of artistic survival. In today’s hybrid world of virtual mobility, collaboration decentralizes creative strategies, enabling artists to carve new territories and maintain practice-based autonomy in an increasingly commercial and saturated art world. Collaboration now transforms not only artistic practices but also the development of cultural institutions, communities and personal lifestyles. This book explores why collaboration has become so integrated into a greater understanding of creative artistic practice. It draws on an emerging generation of contributors—from the arts, art history, sociology, political science, and philosophy—to engage directly with the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of collaborative practice of the future.

The book is a guide for students and teachers to understand the need for, the role of and the methods and techniques of freehand analytical sketching in architecture. The presentation focuses on drawing as an approach to and phase of architectural design. The conceptual goal of this approach is to use drawing not as illustration or depiction, but as exploration. The first part of the book discusses underlying concepts of freehand sketching in design education and practice as a complement to digital technologies. The main component is a series of chapters that constitute a typology of fundamental issues in architecture and urban design; for instance, issues of "façade" are illustrated with sketch diagrams that show how façades can be explored and sketched through a series of specific questions and step-by-step procedures. In the expanded and updated edition, a new part explores the questions and experiences of large architectural offices in applying freehand drawing in the practice of architectural design. This book is especially timely in an age in which the false conflict between "traditional vs. digital" gives way to multiple design tools, including sketching. It fosters understanding of the essential human ability to investigate the designed and the natural world through freehand drawing.

Our homes contain us, but they are also within us. They can represent places to be ourselves, to recollect childhood memories, or to withdraw into adult spaces of intimacy; they can be sites for developing rituals, family relationships, and acting out cultural expectations. Like the personal, social, and cultural elements out of which they are constructed, homes can be not only comforting, but threatening too. The home is a rich theme running through post-war western art, and it continues to engage contemporary artists today - yet it has been the subject of relatively little critical writing. Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday is the first single-authored, up-to-date book on the subject. Imogen Racz provides a theme-led discussion about how the physical experience of the dwelling space and the psychological complexities of the domestic are manifested in art, focusing mainly on sculpture, installation and object-based practice; discussing the work and ideas of artists as diverse as Louise Bourgeois, Gordon Matta-Clark, George Segal and Cornelia Parker within their artistic and cultural contexts.

What is 'performance drawing'? When does a drawing turn into a performance? Is the act of drawing in itself a performative process, whether a viewer is present or not? Through conversation, interviews and essays, the authors illuminate these questions, and what it might mean to perform, and what it might mean to draw, in a diverse and expressive contemporary practice since 1945. 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. In this book, it is used as a trope, and a thread of thinking, to describe a process dedicated to broadening the field of drawing through resourceful practices and cross-disciplinary influence. Featuring a wide range of international artists, this book presents pioneering practitioners, alongside current and emerging artists. The combination of experiences and disciplines in the expanded field has established a vibrant art movement that has been progressively burgeoning in the last few years. The Introduction contextualises the background and identifies contemporary approaches to performance drawing. As a way to embrace the different voices and various lenses in producing this book, the authors combine individual perspectives and critical methodology in the five chapters. 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. The dynamic interaction leads to a collective understanding of the term, performance drawing, and addresses the key developments and future directions of this applied drawing process.