Living Dust

I was invited to curate and exhibit work in a show of contemporary and historical works on paper at the Norwich Gallery, a public-funded gallery attached to Norwich School of Art. The show was intended to form a counterpoint to an exhibition of drawings curated by the late critic Peter Fuller, which was held at the gallery in the 1970s. The gallery has one of the country’s leading international exhibitions programmes outside London. The exhibition I selected sought to re-evaluate drawings as uncertain artefacts defined by their material characteristics, and opposed directly the prevailing view that a drawing is a virtually transparent document of an artist’s thoughts and feelings. The selection ranged from Durer’s 16th century image of ‘St Jerome in his Study’ and a study of a broken brick fragment by the Victorian artist and critic John Ruskin, to Vija Celmins’ important 1973 drawing ‘Irregular Desert’ and Clare Stephenson’s ‘La Technique’ from 2002. I also included a drawing of my own, ‘Transparent head’ (2003). Curating the exhibition involved a long period of negotiation for loans with museums in the UK and collections here and abroad, notably the Broad Foundation in Miami, The Ashmolean Museum and the Scottish National Gallery. The catalogue, for which I wrote a substantial text, was conceived of as a publication which would not just document the show, but exist as a book in its own right. At the opening I presented a short programme of talks, starting with my own introduction to the show, followed by Dr Neil Mulholland of Edinburgh College of Art on the development of concepts significant to drawing, and artist Colin Self on his personal relationship with this practice. As well as receiving BBC coverage, this show was reviewed in The Guardian Guide, Art Monthly and Frieze.