The International Performance Drawing Series brings together artists from around the world who explore the extent of what drawing is through spatial, body-based, performative practices. Using movement, time, sound and collaboration, they stretch and explore the nature of drawing. These are all performance works on video; each is looped and projected in the gallery over 2-3 nights, starting after dark and continuing until dawn. DRAW Space will present a new artist each month, showing six artists from February through July 2024.
Featuring the work of Brooke Leigh (Australia), Carali McCall (Canada/England), Madeleine Lohrum (Spain), Pascal Miehe (Scotland), Stella Geppert (Germany) and Xie Rong (China/UK).
This program is curated by Belinda Yee.
Performance schedule:
February 25-26
PASCAL MIEHE (SCOTLAND) - ARENA (2023)
31 March - 1 April
M. LOHRUM (SPAIN) - two works 6 Feet (2023) and Infinite Walk (2023)
28 - 29 April
CARALI MCCALL (CANADA/ENGLAND) - Horizon/Distance (2024)
26 - 27 May
BROOKE LEIGH (AUSTRALIA) - Drawn-Out (2017)
30 June - 1 July
STELLA GEPPERT (GERMANY) - two works COMMUNICATION CAPTURES (2019) and NoTTBc (2023)
28 - 29 July
XIE RONG (CHINA/UK) Painting until it becomes marble (2011)
February Artist Profile - Pascal Miehe
ARENA (2023), moving image of performative drawing, single channel video and audio, 1080 x 1920, 4 min. 28 sec.
Artist’s Statement
Lines are inherent to the body - in the veins sweeping across your hands, the hairs crawling out from beneath your skin. Drawing happens when line and body find movement.
Drawing is transformative. As stated by John Berger - “Every line I draw reforms the figure on the paper, and at the same time it redraws the image in my mind.’ As the drawing changes in my mind, it may become something else. It may change media, material, dimension. What starts with the small movements of fingers and a pen, quickly finds its way off the page. It is not fixed.
It becomes five men in a five-way tug-of-war, their energy the material, the ink in a pen, perpetually emptied out. Violent.
It becomes a rope; a group of yarns, plies or fibres, twisted together to create a larger and stronger form, a line made up of lines. It becomes five men in a five-way tug-of-war, their energy the material, the ink in a pen, perpetually emptied out. Violent.
In crafting and splicing together a rope structure to be interacted, performed with, or ‘activated’ by a group, I seek to explore intertwined systems of power and domination. I want to work out the ways in which these systems spill over or simmer beneath our everyday living. Involving multiple bodies in this work allows me to integrate elements of multiplicity and mutuality and to wrestle with our collective societal interconnectedness.
Every thread in every rope twists over and under and over, every repetition adding to its strength. A rope is a pattern.
Projected and looped over several nights in the DRAW SPACE gallery, repetition and cycle form intrinsic components to the presentation of ARENA. Did not potters, in ancient Greece, carve out figurative patterns on their clay vessels, their amphoras? They document men in battle, men in competition, boxers, runners, wrestlers - lines carved to highlight muscle, to mark strength and dominance, fusing together the hyper-masculine and the homoerotic; an ever reoccurring motif. - Pascal Miehe
Biography
Pascal Miehe is a multimedia, nomadic artist currently residing in Dundee, Scotland. Born in Germany, he grew up in Namibia before moving to Scotland as a teenager. He completed a BA in Intermedia Art in 2016 at Edinburgh College of Art and an MFA in Drawing at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in 2023. Miehe has also trained as a teacher, specialising in secondary art education, which he credits as pushing him towards a more experimental and socially engaged creative practice
Miehe’s work concerns itself with the frustrations and freedoms of the constraints that shape our lives, often utilising the body as a point of departure. Circularity and repetition have become recurring features, thereby opening up the toolkit of pattern, the undercurrent constant in all human experience. Through the integration of repetitive elements, Miehe seeks to counter ideals of uniqueness and individuality, while also exploring the possibility of disruption.
Web: www.pascalmiehe.com
Instagram: @pascalart_
March Artist Profile - M. Lohrum
6 Feet (2021), moving Image of participative performative drawing, single channel video and audio 1080 x 1920, 5 min. 03 sec. Videographer: Mila Garsós. Filmed at Universidad de La Laguna, Spain.
Infinite Walk (2023), moving Image of participative performative drawing, single channel video and audio, 1080 x 1920, 10 min. 47 sec. Videographer: Yon Bengoechea. Filmed at Centro de Arte La Regenta, Spain.
Artist’s Statement
I define my art practice as performative drawing. I explore drawing as a result of performative processes, where I focus on the act of drawing and the role that the whole body plays in it. In this sense, I use drawing to reflect on, and challenge, the very concept of drawing. Body, gesture, expressiveness, physicality and movement are key factors in my work, and I conceive mark-making and traces as a visual expression of movement-based thinking. I have deliberately chosen to work exclusively with drawing materials and a black and white aesthetics. However, I consider drawing to be a process, a function and a language, rather than an object. This is why my practice challenges boundaries between media. Every work is a drawing, but also a performance, a video and an installation. I believe “drawing” can be manifested in all of these media, which have a marked fragile, changeable and transitory nature in common with both the essence of drawing and the mechanics of my artistic procedures.
In order to create my works, I set certain rules to govern the performative process but spontaneity and chance play an important role in my practice. My creative process is based on an oscillation between pairs of opposite concepts, such as intuition-reasoning, personal-universal experience, figurative-abstract, geometric-organic, presence-absence, trace-tracker, or, most importantly, control-randomness; exploring the possibilities and tensions in between these concepts.
From a young age I showed interest in drawing, group activities, dance, rhythm, yoga or meditation, which had a significant influence in my artistic practice. Aside from a reflection on drawing, my work also addresses themes of zen, meditation, and mindfulness. When I create, on my own or with others, I immerse myself fully in the present moment, paying full attention to my body and emotions.
My performative drawings often involve audience participation. I seek to challenge the notion of individual ‘authorship’ by making collaborative artworks and participative performances. In these, I also set some rules for the performance, but it is the audience who creates performative drawings by tracing their interactions and improvisations while working as a team. These works aim to act as a statement against the individualistic attitude that I identify as a tendency with a negative impact in societies operating under the global neoliberal system. In turn, they emphasise values such as cooperation, collectivity and collaboration, which not only are much more positive and productive, but also more connected to the essence of human being as a social creature. These works reflect my strong belief in art and drawing as tools for building community and establishing links between people in a profoundly individualistic society.
6 Feet was created during the Covid pandemic. It reflects about social distancing and how, as individuals, we influence each other in society. The rules for the performance were to draw with both hands using compressed charcoal bars and to drive the people sitting next to you but also allow them to drive you. The drawing created is the result of negotiations between participants.
Infinite walk addresses notions of togetherness and walking meditation. The rules for the performance were to spread graphite powder with your feet, to walk describing an infinite trajectory and to alternate the participants’ crossings when reaching the centre of the drawing surface.
Biography
M. Lohrum was born in the Canary Islands (Spain) where she graduated in Fine Arts from University of La Laguna, achieving the 'Premio Extraordinario de Fin de Carrera', a prize awarded to the most outstanding graduate in Fine Arts (2013). She later studied a Masters in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins (2017), where she developed in depth her abilities in video and performative drawing. She holds a PhD in Fine Arts from Universidad de La Laguna (2023).
She has participated in relevant international group exhibitions such as Momentum (2023, Manifest Gallery, USA), Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize (2020, Drawing Projects UK, and 2022, Trinity Buoy Wharf, UK), The ING Discerning Eye (2021, 2022 and 2023, The Mall Galleries, UK), Field of Action: Performative Drawings and Paintings (2022, Canning Gallery, UK), What we do when we cannot do what we do (2020, B74 Raum für Kunst, Switzerland), Studiolo XXI, Desehno e Afinidades (2019, Fundação Eugénio de Almeida, Portugal), Draw to Perform: Live Performance Event (2018, The Copper Dollar Studios, UK), Complex Topography, Movement and Change as part of the Setouchi Triennale at Ritsurin Garden (2016, Japan), and several participations in the programmes What is an Art School?, Studio Complex, and Come Together: Art and Politics in a Climate of Unrest, curated by Alex Schady in collaboration with Tate Exchange (2017, 2018, and 2019, Tate Modern, UK).
Among her most relevant solo exhibitions we could mention Re-Thinking the Trace (2019, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Spain, and 2022, The Stone Space, UK), Performative Traces (2021, Galería Manuel Ojeda, Spain), and Drawing is Action (2023, Centro de Arte La Regenta and Sala de Exposiciones del Itto. Canarias cabrera Pinto, Spain).
Her work has been noticed in relevant international art competitions, such as the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize (2022), The ING Discerning Eye (2021 and 2022), Premio de Artes Plásticas Manolo Millares (2021), The Visual Art Open (2021), the Signature Art Prize (2020), Visarte Corona Call (2020), Zealous Stories: Performance (2020), and the Celeste Prize (2017), among others, and was awarded the first prize in Zealous Stories: Performance (2021) and the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize (2020).
Website: www.mlohrum.com
Instagram: @m.lohrum
April Artist Profile - Carali McCall
Distance / Horizon Horizon / Distance: Snow Field (2024) 1920 × 1080 px, 4 minutes 7 seconds. Edition of 5 + 2AP
Artist’s Statement
The Horizon/Distance artworks began using the camera strapped to my body and running through the landscape. In 2010, a point in the practice emerged when running became drawing, and running was a way to make a drawing. Recording the process while in the snow-covered fields of Canada, the body becomes a drawing tool. In addressing movement as drawing and carving a line through space, conceptually, the work aims to open up what drawing can be.
Biography
Carali McCall, who lives and works in London, is an artist whose practice is focused on drawing and performance, yet spans sculpture, video, photography, sound and writing.
In exploring experiences of time and the role of the body, McCall is interested in physicality and the thresholds of materials. Artworks have been made by either carving through the landscape while running, drawing a continuous line with graphite on paper, or holding a bit of the landscape (a rock) as an act of endurance. Through movement and stillness, the work aims to expand conceptual-based art practices, question what is drawing, and explore what it might mean to be human.
Awarded MFA at Slade School of Art, PhD at Central Saint Martins; McCall is co-author of the Bloomsbury publication, Performance Drawing: New Practices since 1945 (2020); recent ‘Circle Drawing’ and ‘Performing Rock’ performances have been presented at Blunk Space in California; Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, CLOSE Gallery in Somerset, UK.
Recent group exhibitions include Lines of Empathy at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art in London UK, i miss the Land but does the Land miss me? Art Seen Gallery in Cyprus; and solo exhibitions, Intervals of Jupiter I Weight of Things at Gryder Gallery in New Orleans; Drawing Now Art Fair, Paris, France, with an upcoming solo exhibition at her represented gallery in Somerset at Close Gallery, UK.
Web: https://www.caralimccall.com
Instagram: @caralimccall
May Artist Profile - Brooke Leigh
DRAWN-OUT (2017), video with sound, 1 hour performance mediated for the camera, 1280 x 720, 18:00. Videography: Simon Baré, sound recording: Michael Orehek. (Edition of 5 + 2AP)
Artist’s Statement
For the past decade, my artistic practice has explored the relationship between drawing and performance. I understand drawing through Catherine de Zegher’s definition that ‘drawing, through its qualities of fluidity and immediacy, is a process that is always in stages of becoming.’ My practice looks at the notion of drawing as residual trace of physical movement and its inverse—the trace of drawing itself (such as bruises and the accumulation of sandstone dust) on the artist's body.
'Drawn-Out' investigates the performative act of drawing to encounter intense states of the body as a cathartic experience. In this sense, the drawing process functions as a way to release severely internalised distress. This performance responds to the cyclical and self-destructive aspect of anxiety. Repetition and duration become devices in order to work my body into a state of exhaustion and near-destruction. This work significantly extends on my explorations of audition to amplify the sensory experience of bodily exhaustion, and the possibility for the sound of mark making––by means of audio recording––to exist as a trace of drawing. 'Drawn-Out' discovers the reassertion of control through externalisation and the possibility that the mark and performance allow one to express, recognise and thereby come to terms with bodily and emotional suffering.
Biography
Brooke Leigh is an interdisciplinary artist from Sydney whose practice explores the performative aspect of drawing. Over the past decade, Leigh's work has evolved from gestural charcoal drawings influenced by surrealism, abstraction and manifestations of the unconscious mind to focusing on the on the sensory experience and materiality of mark making through live performance, video, audio, photography, textile, object and installation.
In 2018, Leigh was awarded a Master of Fine Arts from Sydney College of the Arts for her thesis and project, Drawn-Out: trace and catharsis. She received the Royston George Booker Scholarship to support overseas research and as an exchange student and visiting scholar for 12 months at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium.
During this time, Leigh performed, 'BEGIN' (Croxhapox, Ghent), drawing collaborations, 'Chalk Dialogue' and 'mE/Us' (Draw to Perform Symposium, Crows Nest Gallery, London), and participated in International Performance Art Venice 2016. Informed by these experiences, Leigh published as author ‘Moving Marks’ in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press); and ‘Time Trace: A drawn perception’ in Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice (Intellect Books).
Live and documented iterations of 'Drawn-Out' featured in exhibitions such as MCA ARTBAR curated by Julie Rrap (2017) Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; New Contemporaries (2018), SCA Galleries, Sydney College of the Arts; and Dobell Drawing Prize #21 (2019) at National Art School. In 2019, Leigh curated States and Senses (Kudos Gallery, Paddington) which featured new work by critically acclaimed U.S. artist, Janet Passehl alongside Sydney-based artists Sylvia Griffin, Markela Panegyres and Cecilia White. The multidisciplinary exhibition explored intense emotional states that are often suppressed—such as grief, rage, loss, fear and vulnerability.
Throughout 2020 and 2022, Leigh worked closely with children and adults with anxiety, autism, schizophrenia, bipolar, dyspraxia, sensory integration disorder, and visual impairment. She developed a disability support service for the National Disability Insurance Scheme which incorporated mindfulness, social connection, and creative expression. In 2021, Leigh was an Artist-in-Residence at Arterie (Sydney Local Health District). She was commissioned to realise the participatory project, A Symphony for the Sky which centred on building a sense of connection, contribution, gratitude and hope within Chris O’Brien Lifehouse ––a hospital solely dedicated to treating and researching cancer.
Leigh's research paper, 'Trace and catharsis: Embodied drawing' was published in Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice, 7.1 (2022). She currently lives and works in London as an Artist Educator at the Royal Academy Of Arts.
Web: www.brookeleigh.com
Instagram: @bybrookeleigh
June Artist Profile - Stella Geppert
Work 1
NoTTB-c Notations of Touch Through Breathing (collectively), 2023. Single-channel video, HD 1080p, colour, sound, 6 mins 50 sec. Concept, Vocal sound: Stella Geppert / Duration: ca 20 min / Performance, Installation / breath, charcoal on canvas, tapes / Public rehearsal with guests and friends with Tobias Hantmann, annette hollywood, Patricia Lambertus, Nitsan Margaliot, Anne Mundo, Paul Rohlfs, Efva Lilja, Alice Dittmar, a.o. Image courtesy of the artist and Ralf Bergel
The artist’s work revolves around communication, breathing, empathy, body, space, sculpture, and drawing. The site-specific performance – which for her is never an end in itself, but always forms a dialogue with the surrounding space – is about non-verbal communication, collective bodies, and the modulation of space through breathing. Stella Geppert invites people to participate in the showcase, where they will only be visible through touch. The starting point of the work NoTTB-c or Notations of Touch Through Breathing (collectively) is the windows on the façade of the library, which can be opened and closed by a lever inside the shop window. Seen from the outside, the rhythmic opening and closing of the windows seem like a breath; the architecture breathes in – the architecture breathes out.
Stella Geppert transfers this act to the embodiment of draughts of air by touching the guests and friends in the shop window while breathing. Behind a screen stretched through the entire showcase space, the encounters take place that become visible on the other side in the gestures of touch. Those actions leave seismographic traces of charcoal on the curtain, which becomes a resonance carrier. The emerging movement sequences of the touches become independent drawings and embodied notations.
http://www.stella-geppert.de/works/nottb-c-notations-of-touchthrough-breathing-collectively
Work 2
COMMUNICATION CAPTURES, 2019. Single channel video, HD 1080p, colour, sound, 27 min 23 sec. This documentation video is an excerpt from a four day durational performance at DANSEHALLERNE / DEN FRIE Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen / 4-7 April, 2019. Concept, choreography, Installation: Stella Geppert / Performance with Jan Burkhardt, Stella Geppert, Lucas Geschwind, David Kummer, Michelle Lui, Sophia Seiss, and guests. Image courtesy of the artist and Tim Nowitzki
COMMUNICATION CAPTURES is a participatory choreography that captures the communicative physical presence of everyone in the space. The performers’ head movements are traced into the space by means of headset antennae consisting of a pipe topped with a piece of charcoal. As a vertical extension of the spine, the antenna becomes a tactile communication organ, vertically extending the body’s physical properties and spanning relational axes. Through inhalation and exhalation, the performers imagine their lungs connecting directly to the piece of charcoal, which becomes a seismograph registering communicative impulses. BREATH and CARBON thus become elementary choreographic material.
Over the course of the performance, a multiaxial space emerges from an organic mesh of lines. The choreography represents communicative fields of action, a kind of CELL STRUCTURE OF COMMUNICATION. The random and gentle touches of the charcoal pieces as they wear down leave an inscription in the physical space, a kind of ÉCRITURE CORPORELLE of a collective image of human INTERCONNECTEDNESS. —
In: Breath and Membrane, Stella Geppert, 2022
http://www.stella-geppert.de/works/communication-captures
Artist’s Statement
As a sculptor, performer, and choreographer, I define the medium of drawing as a sculptural imprint in which essential bodily movements are inscribed three-dimensionally. I deal with embodied communication, collective trauma, empathy, and breathing, and explore energetic states and unconscious movements of the body, for example when sleeping, speaking, and touching. My work is a "relational investigation" of verbal and non-verbal body communication.
The artistic work is the creation of and with relationships, in which I follow questions about specific and transformative states of body and space, material and touch, contact and resonance. I see the human body as a "membrane" extremely fragile and vulnerable, with other humans and other species, cells, and organs ... constantly in communication.
Biography
Stella Geppert studied fine arts at the University of the Arts Berlin and the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Numerous scholarships — the Bursary for Emerging Artists (Nachwuchsförderung, NaföG), the Bonn Art Fund (Bonner Kunstfonds), the Berlin Work Scholarship (Berliner Arbeitsstipendium), and a research fellowship at the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani in Venice — support her artistic development. Her work has been exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions, with residencies in Japan, France, Denmark, Italy, China and elsewhere. Stella teaches sculptural and performative practice at the University of Art and Design in Halle (Saale), Germany, and lives in Berlin.
Web: www.stella-geppert.de
Instagram: @stella.geppert
July Artist Profile - Xie Rong (Echo Morgan)
Painting until it becomes marble - Love never dies (2019) Live action painting. Size: (w) 355cm; (h) 103cm; (d) 1cm. Material: Chinese Ink, Ultramarine Blue Powder Pigment on paper 5.44 mins, Film by LUMALENSCAPE.
Artist’s Statement
Painting Until it Becomes Marble - Love Never Dies (2019) is an abstract ink painting I created using my own hair as the brush. The live performance took place under Yoko Ono's installation, The Cricket Memories (1998), which features tiny empty cricket cages hanging from the ceiling, each labeled with a human catastrophe. Yoko invited the audience to write down their own griefs. I was invited to respond to Yoko's legacy and create a live performance for Museum Night at the Museum of Fine Art, Leipzig. I had just lost my beloved mother-in-law after a year-long battle with cancer. In response to this profound sense of loss, I decided to create a hair painting where the masculine calligraphy became a female body's movement.
As an action painter, my work is a physical manifestation of emotion. This unique medium allowed me to capture my profound feelings of loss in a raw and visceral way. Through the drops of ink and the movement of my body, I connected action and mind, creating an expression of sorrow on paper.
This piece is part of an ongoing series of Hair Paintings that began in 2011. Each piece is dedicated to a female or a community’s struggles.
Biography
Xie Rong, also known as Echo Morgan, challenges stereotypes of "Chineseness" and femininity through her provocative art. Using her body as a canvas, she employs materials like Chinese ink, red lipstick, coal, chlorophyll, and her own breast milk to create expressive action paintings and stirring portraits. Inspired by personal experiences and themes such as the body politic and eco-feminism, Xie combines Eastern philosophy, the Fluxus movement, and action art to encourage introspection and dialogue.
Her artwork integrates English narration with Chinese folk songs, challenging notions of beauty, power, and vulnerability. She honed her skills at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute High School, Central Saint Martins, and the Royal College of Art. Her creations have garnered international acclaim, with exhibitions held in various countries. Collaborating with photographer Jamie Baker, Xie explores painting on photographs and mark-making techniques, resulting in unique artist prints. She also creates intimate and challenging personal films. Recently, she has expanded her collaborations to include musicians and movement artists, delving into immersive site-specific storytelling experiences. Blurring the boundaries between theatre and action art, she practices art as a healing power within the community.
Xie has earned accolades, including the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2014, the 40 Under 40 Perspective Art Award in 2017, and the Chinese Arts Now Scratch Award in 2019. She was shortlisted for the Mother Art Prize in 2022. As a lecturer and researcher, she has presented her work at universities in the UK, US, and China, including Sotheby's Institute of Art, Glasgow School of Art, Central Saint Martins, Sichuan Art Institute, and the College Art Association. She has taught the Performance pathway at the Royal College of Art and is currently an associate lecturer at Chelsea College of Art.
Web: www.echomorgan.com (safari)
Instagram: @echomorgan
Twitter/X: @xierongart
Facebook: Echo Morgan