School of Creative arts
8-11 July 2008
Esmé Clutterbuck
David Inshaw RWA
Julian Perry
Janet Stoyel
Quotes from last years delegates:
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"Highly perceptive, tough and motivational. This
has been an invaluable experience." (Emma
Moxey)
"I have found this week inspirational - it has helped me to reposition myself through concentrated study, giving me some vital leads to the next step in my development."
(Caroline Ruark-Davis)
"Excellent facilities, and a really down to earth approach about the work in hand from the 'tutor'. All the staff were extremely helpful, confident and willing to input their knowledge." (Rob Hames)
Drawing Quarters is a practice-based symposium aimed at artists and designers who would like to take part in a four-day sustained studio-based workshop under the mentorship of a selected artist. This year, Drawing Quarters is lead by four nationally and internationally acclaimed practitioners each with a particular set of ideas and approaches to the practice of drawing. Drawing Quarters provides a dynamic opportunity for artists to explore their practice in a studio environment and to engage with some of the current debates within the sector’s growing drawing community.
Esmé Clutterbuck : Biography
Esmé Clutterbuck studied Fine Art at Portsmouth Polytechnic, Painting at the Royal Academy Schools and Printmaking at Central/St Martins, London. Based in Bristol she has exhibited in this country and Europe. She has wide experience as a lecturer and teacher on a variety of courses but is most excited by the teaching of drawing. Known for her evocative drawings of hair, her approach is at once analytical and tender.
“For me drawing is a mysterious activity; a totality of moments captured on a piece of paper. There is something about its intimacy and directness which keeps it at the centre of what I want to do. Scribble, pressure, dashes, panic - often a drawing only starts to mean something to me when I have rubbed it out a number of times. I try to allow the ghost of what is no longer there to inform what comes next. I need the history of the drawing to be somehow present as I make it.”
The Workshop
How does the ‘poetry’ of a drawing emerge from the mechanics of the process of making it? In what way can the process of looking and responding allow memory and emotion to seep into the fabric of a drawing? We will use the human head as the subject for a series of drawings which explore these questions and hopefully elicit some others.
Participants will begin by exploring the physicality of the drawing process in a series of exercises based on mark making, gesture and lack of control, using a range of materials. As our investigations develop participants will be invited to find ways of deepening their engagement and eloquence with materials and processes and to consider questions of scale. There will be the opportunity to take part in a series of communal drawings.
Participants will be required to do some work prior to the event.
David Inshaw RWA : Biography
David Inshaw studied painting at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1964 he was awarded a French Government scholarship to study in Paris for 6 months. David taught at the West of England School of Art between 1966 and 1975. He then received a fellowship in art at Trinity College, Cambridge. Since 1977 he has worked full time as a painter. He has exhibited worldwide.
David Inshaw stimulus has always been people and places. Reading Thomas Hardy had a decisive impact on the direction of his work, and led to a series of ambitious landscape compositions based on the countryside of Devizes in Wiltshire, where he lives. David paints, etches and draws.
In Simon Schama’s book Landscape and Memory, he suggests we need to rediscover our landscape traditions which are “a rich deposit of myths, memories, obsessions”. Cynical artists and a cynical public may find little inspiration from such enduring images, but I feel that as we move further and further away from our roots, the need to express landscape in art as part of our collective unconscious becomes more essential.
The Workshop
Participants may bring research materials such as images of their chosen environment. Alternatively we will use the surrounding landscape to collect references using photographs, drawings and memory. The idea is to use the material gathered and reassemble it introducing other elements such as figures and motives to add a dynamic, mystery or surprise to the work. The aim is to guide each delegate towards producing work that reflects their unique response to nature. Landscape can be used in different ways, for example it can be paraphrased, intensified and used as a metaphor for human feelings; the challenge will be to make landscape relevant to the 21st Century.
Julian Perry : Biography
Julian Perry is an established artist based in East London. His work is characterised by acute observation and a detailed representation of the prosaic and familiar. Exhibitions have featured tower blocks caravan parks, nature reserves and allotment sheds. The critic William Feaver said “Perry has a feel for in-between zones, for places where boundaries waiver and enclaves are created”. Perry exhibits and lectures in America and Europe with works in many public and private collections (including Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery). Thirteen thousand people visited his London Guildhall Exhibition in 2004 for which Arts Council England gave him a major individual award. His most recent show in 2007 recorded allotment sheds (now demolished to make way for the Olympic Games) attracted wide media coverage.
The Workshop
Ever since a Greek sculptor first noticed acanthus leaves growing around a basket placed on a tomb, architects and designers have relished juxtaposing natural and geometric forms. From medieval foliate heads to Art Nouveau nymphs, artists have created by observing and contrasting. In my recent work I have juxtaposed a rhubarb plant and allotment shed. Through drawing, this workshop will involve making new combinations of the organic and geometric. The project will explore both historic models and new possibilities. Participants will be challenged to find examples, or create there own, using found objects, plants and images. I hope graphic skills will be stretched to keep up with participant’s imaginations.
Janet Stoyel : Biography
Janet Stoyel trained as a pattern cutter. She obtained a BA (Hons) in Constructed Textiles at the University of Central England, Birmingham, and a Master of Philosophy research degree at the RCA, London. Janet was awarded The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in January 2004. Janet was a finalist in the International Archive of Women in Architecture, Milka Bliznakov Prize. In 2005 Janet was invited to become an Adjunct Professor in the School of Architecture & Design at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
Challenging conventional material concepts through the ultimate marriage of engineered materials and technology, I exploit the characteristics inherent within a material, changing molecular structures, alchemetically transforming surfaces, textures and colours into revolutionary material adventures.
The intention is to personify material innovation and excellence, generating textiles which will beguile, intrigue and inspire both contemporary and future generations of enthusiasts and aficionados.
The Workshop
Using a wide variety of drawing materials, studio participants will create a diverse body of forms, shapes and textures which can then be tested, stretched and manipulated so that they can be metamorphosed through the process of laser technology. Participants should bring a range of paper, fabrics, textured materials and surfaces that can be played with and transformed; above all, we will try to push our drawings as far as they will go through cutting techniques and processes. During the project your work will be re-fashioned through the process of cutting, slicing, digital carving, and other ingenious laser techniques.
Programme
Tuesday 8 July 2009
09.30 - Registration and Coffee
10.15 - Welcome and Introduction
10.45 - Presentations by Quarter Leaders
13.00 - Lunch
14.00 - Studio
16.00 - Tea and coffee
16.30 - Studio
18:30 - Drinks
Wednesday 9 July 2008
09.00 - Studio
11.00 - Tea and coffee
11.15 - Studio
13.00 - Lunch
14.00 - Studio
16.00 - Tea and coffee
16.15 - Studio
17.30 - Drinks
18.00 - Presentations by Quarter Leaders
Thursday 10 July 2008
09.00 - Studio
11.00 - Tea and coffee
13.00 - Lunch
14.00 - Studio
16.00 - Tea and coffee
17.30 - Drinks
18.30 - Presentation - Roger Conlon
Friday 11 July 2008
09.00 - Studio
11.00 - Tea and coffee
13.00 - Lunch
14.00 - Open studio
15.30 - Plenary session
16.30 - Close
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