The HB Drawing group was founded by a group of artists who met on the MA Drawing course at Wimbledon College of Arts. Their practices vary but what unites them is an interest in the importance and uses of drawing.
Each member has different interests and ways of working, but their collective projects provide them with raw materials to interpret in their own ways. Walking is an important shared factor within their practices. The group's walking projects have taken place in largely suburban places on the fringes of London which offer a mix of the familiar everyday and the extraordinary. In June we were joined by three members of the HB Drawing Group; Su Bonfanti, Janine Hall and Ruth Richmond. They planned to use the Mawddach Trail as the focus of their walking and collective drawing. 'We started the residency with a few random ideas: first of all, to do a lot of drawing, to explore a new place, to walk together, to enjoy the freedom from responsibility and to see what happened. It was the first time since we were on the MA Drawing at Wimbledon that we were together and able to focus intensively on our practices. We set off literally and figuratively in different directions but some common themes emerged. The residency gave us freedom to wonder ‘what if …’ and to try out any and every idea, including the many ways water influenced the landscape (shaping rocks and pebbles) and our ways of working (dipping paper into the river). It gave us time for repetition: walking to our favourite spots, sitting on our favourite rock, drawing that rock again … it allowed space for what we sometimes call failure but what turns out to be just a stage on the way to a new understanding. We take with us memories of Mawddach as a place and the special way Scarlett and Jake create the conditions for something to start that will continue to flourish long after we have left.'
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Sue Jarman and Sally Tyrie are friends who met at Digswell Arts in Hertfordshire. Both their practices are different to each others, which was something that appealed to them about working together at the residency. They planned to share the experience through each others eye's, to learn about each others' methods and share ways of working.
Sally's practice explores environments where land and water exist as a fragile balance, she is particularly driven by themes around natural science, history and climate change. Sue's pratice is driven by everyday life. She planned to collect ideas through documentary style sketchbook work, plein air drawing, observed narratives, and visual eavesdropping, Sue, an inveterate drawer, travelled around the local area by train, along the beautiful Cambrian coastline, drawing the landscape and array of people she saw. She would often leave in the early morning and return late in the evening from a day of drawing encounters. Sally aims to write a series of blog posts about her time as resident which will explore her fascination with the peat blogs and share the developments of the work she created. You can read an excerpt from her first post below; head to her blog to continue reading. "My main intention going to Mawddach was to investigate the estuary itself and its marshy wetland edges which hug the various inlets of the estuary. However, my interest was especially piqued by the peat bogs that straddle the area at the back of where I was staying. The Arthog peat bog is managed by the RSPB and is a ‘remnant of a vast raised bog which once covered much of the Mawddach valley." Click on images for a larger view. Lucy May Schofield and Patrick Gabler met while on residency at Kala Institute in California in 2016 and have written letters and exchanged prints and drawings with one another since then. They first collaborated on a woodblock print last November, with Patrick drawing and Lucy carving and printing the image in Northumberland. They spent time on their residency here exploring themes that cross over within each other's work; inspired by a dialogue between the drawn line and the carved shape. Patrick spent his days making charcoal and pastel drawings outside as the tide ebbed and flowed, while Lucy observed the luna cycle, charting the passage of their time through carving and printing waxing and waning moons.
A favourite discussion we had with Lucy and Patrick was around colour and what is means to us, and what are the colours of our lives. Lucy is well known for her use of blue, she employs blue in many of her prints as blue holds a lot of meaning for her. Throughout their stay they both were struck by the many colours of the estuary and saw a prominent yellow stand out amidst the colours, which they took in to their work. During their residency Patrick worked with a new series of colours given to him by Lucy, a departure from his recent monochrome works. In return Lucy incorporated motifs from Patrick’s drawings into her woodblocks, carving unfamiliar shapes and forms printed with blue gradations. Their time together creating in the same place gave them the freedom to explore new ideas and possibilities in their independent practices as well as through new collaborations. “It was invaluable for us to share this inspiring space where time extends and light illuminates, and we are excited to see what grows from this period together.” - Lucy Click on images for a larger view. Teän Roberts' photographic work places female characters in the landscape of other planets. Taking inspiration from science-fiction, she aims to change our perception of these women by removing their earth-bound context. "Through these photographs she creates a portal to a world she is trying to reach. The alien women in her images exist outside constrictive earthling conditioning." (From Teän's artist statement.)
For this residency Teän moved her focus to the otherworldly nature of Welsh folklore and mythology. She researched the folktales of North Wales, collecting stories of the few women who feature in them. During her time here, Teän began work on producing a series of wearable sculpture, made using collected pieces of the landscape, connecting her to the land and women of the stories. In these stories the women often meet untimely ends, are judged harshly, treated cruelly or are left with broken hearts. Teän created the garments to act as protection, as soft armour to shield these women. She then ventured out in the early mornings to photograph herself and the sculpture in it's landscape. Click on photos for a larger view. Matilde kept an incredibly candid and thoughtful daily reflective journal of her residency on her blog. You can read it here.
Click on the images for a larger view. Protecting the Flame |
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