‘The Moment of Privacy Has Passed’.

‘The Moment of Privacy Has Passed’: Sketchbooks by Artists, Architects and Designers’. (11 Dec 2010 – 20 March 2011). Usher Gallery, The Collection, Danes Terrace, Lincoln.

I am very pleased to present an exhibition featuring the SKETCHBOOKS of artists in progress. These items a fore-running motivation propelling the mentality of this blog.

There are over 200 sketchbooks in this show by contemporary artists, before I get the chance to see the show I naturally begin to imagine what these books may contain, what they might look like inside. The world of art is like this for me, I often imagine what I think of as ‘good’ before I see/experience it, and when I do, it is not as I imagined- thankfully. Then I must go with it, get into it, toil with it, reject or accept.

Intrigue is in the surprises: seeing the uber personal artists’ sketchbook turnout to be exact depersonalised plans for work, or to see the bleak conceptual artist turn out pages of emotion with tear and blood stains on the page… well, maybe. Intriguing to my viewing experience is to be able to find the connections from one place to the other within the work, this is where the sketchbook gets my interest, mixed with a little psychology towards understanding this way of thinking, doing and being. Lets not forget: “Art Saves Lives”. Yes, something without obvious practical problem solving attachments, saves lives..

I think it is curious that it hadn’t occurred to me, the numerous sketchbooks I was filling each year may turn to becoming a real personal exposure, not to mention a deepening what I’d say is my finished work [which I do not blog]. These have turned to being an influence-unexpected and my work at present is beginning to show a merging affinity. Redefining what I’d like to call finished work, and how this so called finished work should ultimately look when I have finished working on it. (Great art works -you could argue- never finish if its meaning is progressively being up-dated with each new generation or viewer).

 

More about the exhibition: HOLD ME! TOUCH ME!  FEEL ME!

Visitors to the Usher Gallery in Lincoln will be able to select, take off the shelf and browse through over 200 sketchbooks on loan from contemporary artists, architects, designers and makers.  The exhibition focuses on the ways in which we can engage with ‘the sketchbook’ in a gallery context. The sketchbooks have been contributed by artists from all over the UK, the USA and Europe. Curated by John Plowman and will be accompanied by a two-day international conference entitled Recto, Verso at The Collection on 10 & 11 February 2011.

 

Divided into four zones the exhibtion incorportates the conventional modes of display of the Cabinet and Wall, the cutting edge of the Digital and the innovative Library. These private and self-referential sketchbooks visible within a gallery context will offer up new insights and perspectives on this hitherto invisible aspect of the creative process.

The Cabinet, Wall and Digital zones will feature sketchbooks from contemporary artists including Grayson Perry and Simon Faithfull as well as historic sketchbooks from the Usher Gallery’s collections.