Come and Draw! Free and open to all, our Library is a unique collection of around 4, books dedicated to the exploration of contemporary drawing. Our Supporters help fund all that we do and enjoy exclusive events, talks, tours and studio visits — find out how you can join! Find out more about Drawing Room, what we do, and our relationship with studio provider Tannery Arts. Tannery Arts is a small, independent charity concerned with supporting the professional development of emerging and established artists through the provision of affordable studios, promoting their practice through opportunities to exhibit work, develop projects, generate partnerships with local authorities, private property owners and social housing organisations as well as engage in learning activities.
Opening on Wednesday 9 October 5. Throughout the twentieth century, and in particular since the s, artists have mined language for the subject and matter of their art, incorporating the mode, format and meaning of text into their work. For their first collaborative project, Drawing Room, London and The Drawing Center, New York, will present parallel exhibitions that explore the relationship between linguistic communication and drawing in recent art.
The selected artists take language and the written word as the subject of the work itself, rather than to influence interpretation of an accompanying image. Collectively these artists demonstrate an inventive use of words and text, creating works that are visually rich and that evoke multiple meanings.
Marking Language could be read as a series of propositions, or positions, that consider the relationship between drawing and written communication in contemporary practice.
It takes work being made today, by seven artists, of roughly the same generation but originating from very different parts of the world, to explore this rich territory. The artists in Marking Language use a range of strategies to divorce language from a linear narrative, for example, by fragmenting words and phrases, or by including multiple and contradictory graphic languages, and giving form to phonetic words and expressions.
