York Art Gallery welcomes a touring exhibition from the British Museum, Drawing Attention: ‘Emerging artists in dialogue’. With this expansive collection, the gallery unites works by renowned artists including Barbara Hepworth alongside some of today’s youngest aspiring artists, striving to make a name for themselves.
On a midweek visit to the gallery, I pretty much had the exhibition to myself. The graphite-coloured walls offered a bold contrast to a range of different textured and coloured artworks, each challenging the limits of ‘drawing’ further and further. I was surprised to see intricate collages and pastel sketches presented alongside oil paintings, as well as a range of perhaps more traditional media that comes to mind when we think of drawing. But as the exhibition shows us, drawing is really the fundamental process that runs through all artworks, and that is not confined to just pencil on paper. In the first room of the exhibition, I was struck by the relationship between sculptures and drawing. Yorkshire-based artist Sam Metz uses sketching as a key stage for planning their geometric plywood structures, by mapping out their composition, inspired by “deconstruct - ing” the human body. The gallery exhibits Stone and Study for ‘Stone’ as key examples. Through this abstraction of the human form, Metz shows that the appearance of disabled bodies can push the boundaries of social norms. Metz draws upon their personal experiences as a disabled and neurodivergent artist and has also described using these drawings as a way of “stimming” (the repetition of movements or sounds, used by autistic or neurodivergent people to calm and express feelings). They said “drawing gives me a release. The shapes seem to reproduce the movements of my tics well. The line as compulsion, the mark as its evidence”. Drawing therefore has impacted not only Metz’s artistic process but also their personal life.
The second room centres on untold histories through drawing, and once again the diversity of media mirrored the variety of emotive but somewhat overlooked narratives. On display is Miriam de Burca’s Long forgotten in Oughterard, from an ink series of forensically studied clumps of earth taken from burial sites of people outcast in 1980s Ireland. This included unmarried mothers and the mentally ill. By focusing on the growth and fragility of plants, she has tried to reconnect with those who were almost forgotten in history.
As does David Haines with his delicate tonal portrait of a sex worker checking his phone for messages from clients. The subtly blended graphite easily gives a sombre tone to the drawing and its small-scale acts as a quiet, voyeuristic snapshot into this man’s life. As well as these perspectives, a particular spotlight is given to artists who depict precolonial histories.
In fact, the exhibition hosts a full chapter on Ugonna Holsen, Nigerian born artist who calls upon mythological imagery and the human psyche to explore the richness of a culture shattered by colonialism. Her vast charcoal canvases flow across the central room narrating the spiritual adventure of a young woman as she seeks to connect with her ‘chi’, a guiding spirit and deity in the Igbo culture of Nigeria. Amongst the wall-to-wall compositions which combine portraits, caves, mountains, and animals through collage-inspired compositions, there are large tonal studies of shells and seeds. These are displayed next to more traditional still lifes from the 1820s “French School”. This juxtaposition highlights how historically, these dialogues have been overlooked in favour of Western art in major art collections, and shows the importance of dedicating a room for Holsen’s homage to her Nigerian heritage.
‘Drawing Attention’ concludes with an impressive display of drawings from the ‘Teenage Art School’ which runs every summer and takes place at the gallery. In this room we hear accounts from teenagers who took part in these workshops. It’s an inspiring part of the exhibition which encourages visitors to tell their own stories through drawing, without focusing too much on the outcome. There is a multitude of materials available, and easels are set up encircling a still life display, with dried flowers, household objects and various piece of furniture. Taking a few minutes to reflect on what I’d just seen was extremely relaxing and pinning up my own work to join the community of visitors’ artwork was a really rewarding feeling.
It’s safe to say that visiting this exhibition really challenges your ideas of what a drawing must look like, but it also sheds light on a multitude of stories and alternate histories that have not been remembered in this way before.
The exhibition is open in York until 28 January before moving on to Wolverhampton and Hartlepool
