Two works selected for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2007

Christine Hatt’s two text works were selected for this exhibition by a panel of subject specialists consisting of Paul Bonaventura, Avis Newman and Catherine De Zegher. The exhibition aims to promote talent and excellence in the field of drawing in the UK. Selected from an open submission of over 2600 drawings, the work of 77 artists was selected, including: Christopher Bucklow; Jacob Cartwright; Julie Cockburn; Ian Davenport; Mark Fairnington; Melanie Jackson; Brighid Lowe; Catherine Moorland; Eamon O’Kane; and Paul Ryan. The exhibition opened at the Jerwood Space, London and will tour to Cheltenham, Glasgow, Bristol, Cardiff and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Hatt’s overarching research method is to record, code and abbreviate the minutiae of everyday existence: phone numbers, names, times, addresses and dates. The resulting data is then edited and re-notated to form visual texts. Within and between texts, sub-categories are created within an invented taxonomy.

Specific questions addressed by these two discrete but related works include: how may the reductivist visual aspect of text works be balanced against their textual/linguistic function as emotive memorials? The viewer comes to infer that both works group clusters of names and dates, organised by decade by decade. It can be posited that ‘End’ lists deaths, ‘2007’ - births. The maximum submission to the exhibition was three works per artist. It was therefore necessary to create works which were autonomous, since one to three works might be chosen, and yet which would also inter-relate in any combination, whichever were selected.