Drawing Abroad

Drawing Abroad brings together artists from London, Seoul, Sydney and Brisbane whose drawing practices investigate the versatility of the medium. These artists embrace the immediacy and fluidity of the drawing discipline, exploring the language of line and mark making through diverse processes in their approach to drawing. Through Contemporary drawing practices the exhibition demonstrates the drawing discipline as a tool for mapping out spaces and marking time whilst engaging with the tactile dialogue between the materials at hand. 

London based, German artist Hanna ten Doornkaat engages drawing through mark making and repetition. In an investigation of line she plays on the act of drawing by reducing and limiting herself to strict rules to begin the process of her drawings. Doornkaat’s practice is a pursuit of regularity, reflected in the repetitious mark-making. Doornkaat is represented by the Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London and New York. Exhibiting extensively in the UK and Germany, this is the first time Doornkaat’s work is to be shown in Australia.

Paul Lee is a Korean artist who lives and draws in Seoul. Drawing for Lee, marks a space and time, his existence. Through the physical repetitive process of drawing abstract geometrical shapes Lee has discovered his practice to inhibit a meditative and philosophical aspect. Lee’s work has recently been selected for the 2014 Royal Academy summer exhibition in London. This is the first opportunity for Lee’s work to be exhibited in Australia.

Brisbane based Miles Hall‘s practice is concerned with bringing the process of drawing back to the tactile qualities of the materials at hand. By engaging with this, Hall offers a tactile and cerebral resistance to the disembodied and frictionless digital frontier. Hall lectures in Fine Art at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University and has recently undertaken a three month residency in Paris as the recipient of an Australia Council Grant.

Jonathan McBurnie’s drawings are created as a form of eroticism. Repetition and obsession are evident through McBurnie’s constant sifting through a variety of media for potential fodder for drawing. This becomes a constant impulse for McBurnie, reconfiguring the act of drawing into a ritualistic, even fetishistic method for filtering and reflecting the world through a metafictional melodrama.

Melissa Howe is a Sydney based artist with background studies in architecture and photography. Her practice investigates the city and its inhabitants through autobiographical drawings. By incorporating the use of photography and drawing Howe looks to portraiture as a means of tracing and marking time. Her recent interest lies in capturing strangers encountered in the daily routine of city life in New York City and Sydney.

Sydney based artist Brooke Leigh (Carlson) investigates how Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist techniques of automatic drawing can be reiterated in a contemporary context. Her practice explores the performative aspect of automatic drawing through series of process-based charcoal drawings reprocessed through photo silk screen printing and other remediations.