Pushing paper: contemporary drawing from 1970 to now MARCIA KURE on Drawing

Marcia Kure talks about drawing and her work in the British Museum touring show:

Pushing paper: contemporary drawing from 1970 to now

A British Museum Touring exhibition. Generously supported by the Bridget Riley Art Foundation

19 September - 29 November 2020 - Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea

Glynn Vivian Art Gallery is part of the City of Swansea and supported by the Arts Council of Wales

Transcript from Video for Pushing paper: contemporary drawing from 1970 to now

I am fascinated by the idea of drawing-
To draw, to pull, to tug at something
Since my encounter with Uli script writing and South African cave drawings, I have always sought to push the boundaries of what drawing can be, what does it mean - to draw - Stretching the boundaries of its meaning, expanding the notion and freeing it from the confines of 2 dimensionality. Also, rethinking 2 dimension - what it mean as it relates to drawing?
This - in varied forms have been the quest central to my practice as an artist.

I have pulled needle and thread through fabric, used the cut of scissors as line, stitched with a sewing machine and drawn the spaces in-between line.
Felt and molded clay with my hands to form the contours of a body
And asked the question -

Must line be something you can see?
Can line be a leaf falling from a tree, a walk, can a be a journey. Can it also be the experiences within that journey?
Must drawing be visible to the naked eye?

One thing to always remember about drawing is that it is seminal, it marks the beginning of something and like a stem cell, drawing can become anything.

Drawing places a mark, it records time, space, distance and movement.

About the work in Pushing paper
The drawing in Pushing Paper was conceived as a suite of drawings for the Paris Triennale, Intense Proximity, curated by Okwui Enwezor, in 2012
It is a configuration of Uli scriptwriting from Southeastern Nigeria, the biomorphic shapes of Nok terracotta sculpture and Bamana Boli figures from Mali, Traditional hand-drawn Disney animation, surrealism, and a touch of kawaii

Following its initial presentation, the exhibition toured across the United Kingdom, extending its questions around inscription, power, and collective form into multiple institutional contexts. It was first presented at the British Museum in London (September 12, 2019 – January 12, 2020), before traveling to the Oriental Museum in Durham (February 29 – May 17, 2020). The work later moved to the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea (September 19 – November 29, 2020), then to The Cooper Gallery in Barnsley (December 12, 2020 – March 6, 2021), and most recently to the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness (April 2 – June 4, 2022). Across these sites, the installation encountered new architectures and publics.

What Dot saw on a Walk

The story details a straight blue line who is hopelessly in love with a red dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. Taking advantage of the line's stiffness, the squiggle rubs it in that he is a lot more fun for the dot.

The depressed line's friends try to get him to settle down with a female line, but he refuses. He tries to dream of greatness (seeing himself as a daredevil, a leader in world affairs, a law enforcer, a vital element in the art world, and a sportsman) until he finally understands what the squiggle means and decides to be more unconventional. Willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, the line manages to bend himself and form angle after angle until he is nothing more than a mess of sides, bends, and angles. After he straightens himself out, he settles down and focuses more responsibly on this new ability, creating shapes so complex that he has to label his sides and angles in order to keep his place.

When competing again, the squiggle claims that the line still has nothing to show to the dot. The line proves his rival wrong and is able to show the dot what she is really worth to him. When she sees this, the dot is overwhelmed by the line's responsibility and unconventionality. She then faces the now nervous squiggle, whom she gives a chance to make his case to win her love.

The squiggle makes an effort to reclaim the dot's heart by trying to copy what the line did, but to no avail. No matter how hard he tries to re-shape himself, the squiggle still remains the same tangled, chaotic mess of lines and curves. He tries to tell the dot a joke, but she has realized the flatness of it, and he's forced to retreat. She realizes how much her relationship with the squiggle had been a mistake. What she thought was freedom and joy was nothing more than sloth, chaos, and anarchy.

Fed up, the dot tells the squiggle how she really feels about him; denouncing him as meaningless, undisciplined, unkempt, unaccountable, insignificant, indeterminant, inadvertent, out of shape, out of order, out of place, and out of luck. She leaves with the line, having accepted that he has much more to offer, and the punning moral is presented: "To the vector belong the spoils." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dot_and_the_Line

Paul Klee:

A line is a dot that went for a walk

Question:

Where did the dot go?

What did the dot see? Who did the dot meet? How did the dot feel on the walk?

#studionotes

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

Directed by Chuck Jones

Co-directed by Maurice Noble

Narrated by Robert Morley

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film (1965).