Graeme Todd A Parliament of Lines. “A drawing can be a number of things. It can be a sketch at the...
If you can't read please download the document
Graeme Todd A Parliament of Lines. “A drawing can be a number of things. It can be a sketch at the primary stage of artistic vision or the main vehicle
A drawing can be a number of things. It can be a sketch at the
primary stage of artistic vision or the main vehicle of expression,
an end in itself. It is a place where artists deliberate. More than
any other medium, it reveals their intimate thoughts and workings.
With a material presence and a labour intensive realisation, many
drawings today are a reaction against the fleeting experience of
images prevalent in our media saturated existence.1 In late summer
of 2011 Graeme Todd received an invitation from Euan Gray, an
independent curator and artist, to take part in an exhibition that
he was curating called A Parliament of Lines, to take place at the
City Art Centre in Edinburgh in May/July 2012 and touring to the
Pier Arts Center, Orkney in March/July 2013 and RMIT Gallery,
Melbourne, Australia in June/August 2013.
Slide 3
Slide 4
A Parliament Of Lines presents 15 artists, all working at an
international level and all have an exceptional understanding of
their medium. They were chosen for their ability to create and
maintain a distinct personal vision. All are Scottish or have
passed through the Scottish education system. The focus is on five
themes which endeavour to set up a dialogue between various
artists. The themes are figuration; abstraction; landscape;
sculptural investigation and film, photography and reproduction.
The artists included in the exhibition are : Charles Avery, Paul
Chiappe, Layla Curtis, Moyna Flannigan, Luca Frei, Euan Gray, Sam
Griffin, Marie Harnett, Callum Innes, Alan Johnston, Andrew
Mackenzie and David Shrigley and Graeme Todd.
Slide 5
Installation views of A Parliament of Lines at the Pier Arts
Centre, Orkney, May 2013. Showing works by Graeme Todd, Euan Gray
and Andrew McKenzie in the main gallery.
Slide 6
The main research strands that form the underlying concerns for
Todd in the context of this group exhibition are: The relationship
between drawing in relation to painting and how relative value
thresholds are reached by certain formal inclusions or omissions
such as colour, ground, scale and finish. Reference is made to the
'coloured ground' drawings of Albrecht Altdorfer (1480 - 1538) and
Albrecht Durer (1471 1528) as a historical precedent. The
relationship between early independent landscape depiction in
Europe and the oriental 'floating world' concept of landscape space
with particular reference to Seshhu Toyo (1420 1506) The
relationship of the above to the 'colourfield 'painting in the mid
twentieth Century, in particular to late works of Lucio Fontana
(1899 - 1968) specifically the Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept)
works consisting of holes or slashes on the surface of monochrome
paintings to create what he termed an art for the Space Age.
Slide 7
Winter Landscape Sesshu Toyo Dead Pyramus Albrecht
Altdorfer
Slide 8
Concetto Spaziale Lucio Fontana
Slide 9
The idea that the simple addition of a colour, for it's unique
formal value, can change the reading of a drawing and place it
alongside painting as an object of significance and worth is one
that is intriguing to Todd and he has used this in recent works
where the roles of drawing and painting are worked seperately and
brought together in a layering process that is constantly evolving;
this involves placing layers of drawing, mostly in ink, and
alternating these with layers of painted activity to build up a
work whose history can be read from the first marks to the last.
This gradual build up of information that is 'sandwiched' between
layers of varnish has an effect similar to Japanese laquer work and
can be likened to the way that the past is preserved when a fly is
trapped in amber. As a naturally grown structure, it combines
concepts of pictorial space with the process of creation. The slow
pace of the works gestation encourages a similarly prolonged
engagement from the viewer as the works gradually reveal
themselves; this is in deliberate contrast to the 'fast grab' of
much of contemporary imagery.
Slide 10
Untitled Acrylic, ink, varnish on panel, 2012 Graeme Todd
Slide 11
The pieces are worked on both horizontally and vertically to
accommodate different types of activity, varying from fine pen and
ink work to pouring layers of varnish which are done while the work
is flat and more open work done on the vertical with marker pens
and brushes. The works are improvised over a period of time that
can vary from weeks to months and reflect a train of thought that
is sustained and deliberate and is open to a world of open
diversity and retrospective reflection in the studio that allows
for improvisation and departure in the making of the new
work...This by no means distances (him) from the flow of the now,
in fact his distance is a constructed bemused withdrawal to place(
himself) at a vantage point from which he may have a very open view
of the past and its conjunction with the present. (2)
Slide 12
Untitled acrylic, ink, varnish on panel, 2012 Graeme Todd
Slide 13
The works produced for this exhibition were of significance to
the artists further development through the focus on drawing's
relationship with( and in) painting and tacit investigations into
the art of the past - as something distant and trans historical.
This has, in turn, raised further questions regarding the
relationship between the past and the present as well as between
forms and how the pursuit of one heirarchy leaves one at the other
in a strange loop - What I mean by a strange loop is.....a shift
from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which
feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet,...one winds
up, to one's shock, exactly where one started out. 3.
Slide 14
Mt Washu Acrylic, ink, varnish on canvas 2004 Graeme Todd
Slide 15
References 1. Euan Gray Foreword - A Parliament of Lines 2.
Alan Johnston - Formlos ; The Transparent Mirror:A Mediaeval
Abstract 3. Douglas Hofstadter - I am a Strange Loop