Sorcha Dallas

This exhibition of new and recent work by eleven highly acclaimed young international artists explores a diverse range of contemporary approaches to drawing. From small, intricately-crafted pencil drawings to expanded installations in which the ‘drawn’ lines are made from masking tape, or in which drawings mutate into animation, the exhibition celebrates a contemporary resurgence in drawing.

In the Western tradition, drawing was the foundation of art education, the essential discipline underlying all others. In the second half of the 20th century, a more academic approach to art making threatened the authority of drawing as a ‘pure’ art form and as a result, many schools cast it out as a throwback to past times. Recently, however, drawing has returned to the mainstream as a cheap and autonomous activity, a democratically available form of image making, uniquely capable of intimate, spontaneous self-revelation.

Just as the formal and stylistic parameters of drawing have expanded, so too has the range of artists it attracts. This exhibition brings together artists from several continents, all using drawing to communicate their ideas, dreams and interpretations of the world.