Symposium: Drawing at Art School
Friday 8 November 2019
The Drawing Studio, UWE City Campus, Arnolfini, Bristol BS1 4AQ
A day of talks and discussions about drawing at art school
As a newly forming research group, we are holding a number of events to examine and focus our research intentions. Our current membership is an interdisciplinary group from across the Schools of Art and Design, and Film and Journalism at UWE, with a unifying interest in drawing in contemporary arts practice and research. We would like to use this day of discussion to review what drawing is and has been at art school, and what it could and should be in future.
The teaching of drawing has changed dramatically at art school over the course of a generation. The way that students are taught drawing today varies from the experience of their tutors. And experiences vary even between different generations of tutors.
There is talk of the decline of skills-based teaching and of students setting up their own life drawing classes. But what drawing skills do art students need anyway? What are they drawing for?
Drawing has been re-framed since the 1960s, asserting itself as an independent and autonomous practice. Dedicated galleries, BA and MA courses now exist across the country. What does this mean for how drawing is taught now and in the future?
Speakers include: Chloe Regan, UWE; Andrew Hall, CSM UAL; Paul Fieldsend Danks, Plymouth College of Art; Tania Kovats, Bath Spa University; Howard Riley, Swansea College of Art; Stefan Gant, University of Northampton; Garry Barker, Leeds Arts University; Kelly Chorpening, Camberwell UAL; Simon Packard, Bath Spa University; Lucy Algar, Wimbledon UAL; Sophia Banou, UWE.
The Drawing Studio, UWE City Campus, Arnolfini, Bristol BS1 4AQ
A day of talks and discussions about drawing at art school
As a newly forming research group, we are holding a number of events to examine and focus our research intentions. Our current membership is an interdisciplinary group from across the Schools of Art and Design, and Film and Journalism at UWE, with a unifying interest in drawing in contemporary arts practice and research. We would like to use this day of discussion to review what drawing is and has been at art school, and what it could and should be in future.
The teaching of drawing has changed dramatically at art school over the course of a generation. The way that students are taught drawing today varies from the experience of their tutors. And experiences vary even between different generations of tutors.
There is talk of the decline of skills-based teaching and of students setting up their own life drawing classes. But what drawing skills do art students need anyway? What are they drawing for?
Drawing has been re-framed since the 1960s, asserting itself as an independent and autonomous practice. Dedicated galleries, BA and MA courses now exist across the country. What does this mean for how drawing is taught now and in the future?
Speakers include: Chloe Regan, UWE; Andrew Hall, CSM UAL; Paul Fieldsend Danks, Plymouth College of Art; Tania Kovats, Bath Spa University; Howard Riley, Swansea College of Art; Stefan Gant, University of Northampton; Garry Barker, Leeds Arts University; Kelly Chorpening, Camberwell UAL; Simon Packard, Bath Spa University; Lucy Algar, Wimbledon UAL; Sophia Banou, UWE.
A publication is available from this exhibition, designed by City Edition Studio.
To purchase, please visit the shop.
To purchase, please visit the shop.
|
|
All photos by Rowena Ward
Audio Recordings from the Symposium
First Session
|
Lucy Ward
Introduction |
Andrew Hall
Drawing as a Democratic Space Within the Fine & Applied Arts: Categorisation, Process, Outcome |
Chloe Regan
Drawing as a Learning Tool, an Exploratory Study |
Paul Fieldsend Danks
Drawing Learning/Learning Drawing: A Personal View |
Panel Discussion 1
|
Second Session
|
Howard Riley
The Case for the Primacy of Visualcy within a Neoliberal Artschool Curriculum |
Tania Kovats
Communities of Practice: Drawing |
Panel Discussion 2
|
Third Session
|
Anouk Mercier
Introduction 2 |
Kelly Chorpening
Drawing’s Agency: Where Less Can be More |
Garry Barker
What’s drawing got to do with me? |
Stefan Gant
Ruminating the Physical, Digital and Phygital in a Contemporary Drawing Programme |
Panel Discussion 3
|
Fourth Session
|
Simon Packard
Making Room for a Drawing Room: Naked Tuesdays, Weird Wednesdays, Ballerinas and Baptisms |
Lucy Algar
Drawing Performance: Creating Confident Collaborators through Movement, Mark-Making, Dance and Dialogue |
Sophia Banou
Architectures of Drawing: Critical Drawing as Spatial Practice |
Panel Discussion 4 and Thank Yous
|
Speakers
|
Lucy Algar
Drawing Performance: Creating Confident Collaborators through Movement, Mark-Making, Dance and Dialogue Biography: Lucy Algar is an artist, performance designer and educator. She is Course Leader for the BA Theatre Design course at Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL. She has designed sets and costumes for theatre, film and TV and created installations in galleries and public spaces. Her practice focuses on the links between drawing and performance and in 2017 she was Artist in Residence at The Centre for Drawing. Lucy studied for her MA Art & Design in Education at the Institute of Education and teaching is central to all her work. In her teaching, Lucy aims to enable her students to interrogate the breadth of contemporary theatre & performance design through a variety of processes whilst retaining a focus on drawing as the core tool by which designers think and communicate. Contact: www.lucyalgar.com Instagram: @lucyalgar_ |
|
|
Sophia Banou
Architectures of Drawing: Critical Drawing as Spatial Practice Biography: Sophia is a Lecturer in Architecture at the UWE Bristol. She has studied architecture in Athens (NTUA, 2008) the University of Edinburgh, from which she holds an MSc in Advanced Architectural Design and a PhD in Architecture by Design (2016). Her doctoral research examined architectural representation and the status of architectural drawing conventions through a critical-historical approach to urban representation. She has previously practiced architecture in Greece and taught architectural design and theory at the University of Newcastle and the University of Edinburgh. She is currently co-editor at Drawing On: Journal of Architectural Research by Design and Charrette. Her research is concerned with questions of representation, mediality and mediation in architecture. Her work has been published and exhibited internationally, and can be found in permanent collections in Europe and the USA. Contact: [email protected] [email protected] |
|
Garry Barker
What’s drawing got to do with me? Biography: Garry Barker has taught drawing for over 40 years at Leeds College of Art, (now Leeds Arts University), in sometimes specialist areas, such as fashion design, interior design or illustration, but mainly within a fine art context. Garry Barker is an artist and lecturer, with a drawing led practice. He is the current holder of the Rabley Drawing Centre SKETCH award, a once every four year competition designed to explore how artists and designers are using sketchbooks and one of his hand drawn animations was selected for the 2018 Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing competition. He uses everyday conversations to develop a practice that seeks to find the allegorical in what is going on around him. He is currently working with the group ‘Life Hacks for a Limited Future’ and trying to make images that reflect on a changing understanding of the world as he gets older. His current project is centred on how to rethink a library as a place for invention and he is currently making ceramics. A depository of current research can be found here: https://lau.collections.crest.ac.uk/view/creators/Barker=3AGarry=3A=3A.html Contact: [email protected] |
|
|
Kelly Chorpening
Drawing’s Agency: Where Less Can be More Biography: Kelly Chorpening holds a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. In 2016 she was shortlisted for both the Derwent and Jerwood drawing prizes and had a solo exhibition at Horatio Jr., London. Many of her projects are co-developed as books, published by Studio International (USA), Loughborough University/Marmalade Press, RGAP (UK), Sint-Lucas Visual Arts and OPAK, FAK, KULeuven (Belgium). She is co-editor and contributor to ‘A Companion to Contemporary Drawing’ to be published in early 2020 as part of Wiley Blackwell’s Companion series. Her teaching of drawing extends beyond art to students of archaeology (The New School and New York University), engineering (Kings College London), architecture (The AA Schools) and choreography (Trinity Laban). She was the Course Leader for BA (Hons) Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Art London from 2006 – 2019 until her recent appointment as Programme Director Fine Art: Painting, Drawing and Printmaking at Camberwell. Contact: www.kellychorpening.com instagram: @kellychorpening |
|
Prof Paul Fieldsend Danks
Drawing Learning/Learning Drawing: A Personal View Biography: Paul Fieldsend-Danks is Associate Professor and Academic Dean at Plymouth College of Art. He currently leads the Schools of Arts + Media, Design + Communication, and Critical + Cultural Studies. Fieldsend-Danks studied BA (Hons) Fine Art at Newcastle University and MA European Fine Art at Winchester School of Art/ University of Southampton. Fieldsend-Danks has exhibited drawings in the UK, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, Japan and Australia, and has work in both public and private collections. He is currently on the editorial board for Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice published by intellectbooks, and a co-editor of the international peer-reviewed drawing research journal Tracey, published by Loughborough University. He was a co-director of Tracey between 2011-2014. He has contributed numerous articles and papers to international journals and conferences including The Journal of Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education; Tracey: Drawing and Visualisation Research Journal; Group for Learning in Art & Design (GLAD), Manchester Metropolitan University; Arts Without Borders, Helsinki University of the Arts, Finland; and ENACT: Learning in/through the Arts, 7th ELIA Teachers’ Academy, Netherlands. Contact: [email protected] https://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/studying/staff-profiles/paul-fieldsend-danks |
|
Photo credit Simon Calley 2019
|
Stefan Gant
Ruminating the Physical, Digital and Phygital in a Contemporary Drawing Programme Biography: Stefan Gant is a contemporary drawer whose practice explores phygital (physical and digital) relations between drawing, existing and emergent technologies. Following an MA in Drawing at Wimbledon School of Art in 2005, he was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2007, 2010 and 2012 and is currently shortlisted for The Lumen Prize 2019. Stefan has facilitated drawing from FE to HE level since 2006 including: Orebro Konskola, Sweden; University of Chester; Liverpool School of Art and Design (LJMU) and the University of Northampton where he is Senior Lecturer in Drawing and Digital Practice. He teaches across B.A. (Hons) Painting and Drawing, B.A. (Hons) Fine Art and MA Fine Art programmes. In 2015 he organised and co-chaired The Sketchbook Today International Symposium in conjunction with Tate Britain and in collaboration with the Rabley Drawing Centre, followed by Painting, Drawing and the Digital International Symposium, 2017 in collaboration with the Drawing Center, New York. Stefan’s drawing practice has recently been informed by field archaeology, through an artist in residence with The School of Archaeology, University of Oxford which began in 2013. The residency has developed into incorporating a collaboration with Dr John Pouncett, University of Oxford, based at Blenheim Palace (2019-2023). Contact: Twitter: @StefanGant1 Instagram: stefan.gant [email protected] |
|
Andrew Hall
Drawing as a Democratic Space Within the Fine & Applied Arts: Categorisation, Process, Outcome Biography: Andrew Hall has worked as a senior lecturer in illustration on the Central Saint Martins Graphic Communication Design Programme since 1998, and more recently, in conjunction with leading on admissions. He has published writing on Japanese and American illustration practice, on learning to become an illustrator, on analogue and digital illustration practice, and on contemporary, multi-disciplinary practice in illustration. His current project is a commission by Octopus Publishing Group and Princeton University Press titled 'A Visual History of Illustration', to be published in late 2020 / early 2021. Contact: [email protected] |
|
|
Tania Kovats
Communities of Practice: Drawing Biography: Alongside her international career as an artist, Kovats has always taught in fine art environments and previously to her current post as Professor of Drawing at Bath Spa University, she was Course Leader for the MA Drawing at University of the Arts London. Kovats is a leading advocate for promoting drawing; encouraging drawing for a purpose, focusing on process, ideas and cross-disciplinary dialogues that encourage students to define a personal methodology for drawing and communicating ideas to an audience, investigating pedagogy, and developing personal research strategies. This philosophy has informed her drawing publications, ‘Drawing Water: drawing as a mechanism of exploration’. This was Kovats’ second publication on drawing and comprised of her writing on a collection of drawings all thematically linked by the sea. ‘The Drawing Book: the primary means of expression’, Kovats’ first publication on drawing, compiled a cross-disciplinary survey of drawing as a primary generative form of visual communication. In addition to her teaching responsibilities at UAL she set up DRAW, a Postgraduate Reading Group focusing on interdisciplinary approaches to drawing which is a pan-university initiative coming out of the Centre for Drawing, Wimbledon. She is currently researching the potential of promoting drawing practice for well being, and pairing her environmental agenda with various drawing projects including Drawing Ecologies in New Zealand. Contact: [email protected] instagram: @kovats66 @drawingbreath.me |
|
Simon Packard
Making Room for a Drawing Room: Naked Tuesdays, Weird Wednesdays, Ballerinas and Baptisms Biography: Simon Packard is employed at SGS South Gloucestershire and Stroud College as Drawing Coordinator for Levels 3-5. Anchored at Stroud Campus after a number of years working across other locations he now leads Fine Art cohorts both at Foundation and Foundation Degree. In 2016 he commenced a 7 year, part-time PhD at Bath Spa University with a Supervisory team from Art & Design and Education. Titled: Ice, Offal; Why Ask a Photographer to Draw, this research project is a longitudinal case study of the effectiveness of Drawing activities devised by Packard on the creative development of students at SGS Stroud between 2011-16. Interviews are held with past students 2-3 years post college. Contact: Twitter: @simonpackard @phdrawing @drawingwithice Instagram: @simonhpackard @phdrawingthesis |
|
|
Chloé Regan
Drawing as a Learning Tool, an Exploratory Study Biography: Chloé is a Senior Lecturer in Art ＆ Design (Integrated Foundation) at the University of the West of England. Her teaching is primarily in Drawing and Communication. Her academic and artistic work focuses on the exploration of the potential of sketching and drawing from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Chloé graduated from the Royal College of Art in MA Communication Art and Design and specialised in Illustration. She gained academic experience in a number of art schools including London College of Fashion, Arts University Bournemouth and London Metropolitan University. She has lectured on a diverse range of creative courses such as Graphic Arts, Illustration, Archaeological Illustration and Fashion Communication. Chloé has applied her drawing practice to research, art exhibitions, creative events, museum commissions, editorials, book covers and creative workshops. Contact: [email protected] www.chloeregan.com Instagram: @chloereganartist Twitter: @chloe__regan |
|
Howard Riley
The Case for the Primacy of Visualcy within a Neoliberal Artschool Curriculum Biography: Howard Riley PhD MA(RCA) CertDes FRSA FHEA studied at the Hammersmith College of Art, Coventry College of Art, and the Royal College of Art. He holds a doctorate of the University of Wales in the practice and pedagogy of drawing. He taught drawing at Curtin University, Western Australia, and the Malaysian Institute of Art, Kuala Lumpur, 1980-91, before teaching at Swansea, 1991-2015. Head of the School of Research & Postgraduate Studies, Swansea College of Art, University of Wales Trinity St David, 2004-14. Academic papers at: https://researchgate.net/profile/Howard_Riley His drawings have been exhibited in Australia, Malaysia, Finland, Serbia, the USA and the UK. A selection at: https://howardriley.wordpress.com Riley is Professor Emeritus, Swansea College of Art. Contact: [email protected] |
|
Other Contributors
|
Joe Munro
Artist in Residence Biography: Joe Munro is an award-winning artist inspired by the observed world. His pen marks translate his observations into powerful social commentary that suggests the realities of the future for modern life and culture. His work has taken him to locations all over the globe, from the tobacco farms of Cuba to the bustling markets of Vietnam. These projects often involve investigating a subject on location; recording hidden narratives, overheard conversations and capturing the beauty amongst the moving forms. His loose and spontaneous marks can be suggestive of passing time and how a drawing is just a distilled snapshot of a much more complex narrative taking place. By applying layers of colour, ink marks and washes, he is able to breathe life into certain areas of his work and bring focus to the composition. Joe graduated from BA Illustration at UWE in 2015. Contact: www.joemunro.com Instagram: @joe_mun |
Rowena Ward
Photographer
Biography:
Portrait and documentary photographer currently studying BA Photography at the University of the West of England. Her work focuses on human interaction, social critique and evoking emotional response to encourage positive change.
Contact:
instagram: @rowenawardd
Photographer
Biography:
Portrait and documentary photographer currently studying BA Photography at the University of the West of England. Her work focuses on human interaction, social critique and evoking emotional response to encourage positive change.
Contact:
instagram: @rowenawardd
This event is kindly supported by Cass Art Bristol |