Descriptions

Presented in association with ‘The Stage of Drawing: Gesture and Act’ selected by Newman, this solo exhibition brought together three distinct groups of Newman’s work, ‘Webs’, ‘Meridians’ and ‘Descriptions’. The exhibition clearly evidenced her concerns with the notion of drawing as a process of representation linked to inscription and the gestural trace in relation to mark-making and language.

By examining the construction methods of spider’s webs she was able, in the ‘Webs’ series of canvases, to explore the potential and process of mark-making before it is put to the service of line and contour. The web became a metaphor for the notion of an image that has no a-priori, but exists only at the moment of making. The research elaborated her longstanding concerns with the notion of drawing as ‘the nearest equivalent to the operations of thought’. The ‘Meridians’ series consisted of both canvases and objects. It alluded to the immaterial, the intangible and the tension between subjective experience and its representation as a theme in contemporary art practice. The canvases explored notions of shadow forms inspired by Pliny’s ‘Origin of Drawing’. In contrast to the canvases, the box-like objects made of slate and glass explored reflection and how the body of the viewer is implicated into the form of the work and in so doing creates a ‘closure’ of meaning. The ongoing series entitled ‘Descriptions’ consisted of large canvas works made up of layer upon layer of thin acrylic paint in which the drawn images of ribbon-like contours that refer to the depiction of a variety of organic life are embedded. The obscurity of the contours demonstrated the ‘gap between concept and realisation,’ what cannot be described and therefore what cannot be said and what is always excluded from explanation and understanding.