Reviewed by Georgia Cassimatis
What better way to pass time in life, than an interactive experience at a contemporary artist’s exhibition.
Home to such events is Draw Space in Enmore: a new centre that provides a platform to make, see and experience contemporary drawing, while encouraging research and exploration of the endless possibilities. The space, with its tall ceilings, white walls and natural northern light, looking out at the passing street parade, makes this concept all the more accessible.
Gary Warner’s / Working Drawing is this month’s exhibition. His art practice, as described, spans sound, video, drawing, installation and performance, in contexts that include writing, curating, and collaboration. Each visitor performs subjective acts of engagement and response.
Favourites included: ‘two lines between floor and ceiling’: a string of handmade aluminum beads, dancing above a glimmering disc, the ‘Demonstration model – a Sierpinski Gasket’: in fractal form, the work is constructed from 243 isomorphic triangles hand-cut from beer tins, and the ultimate gadget so to speak, the ‘3-pendulum harmonograph’: harmonographs translate the energy expenditure of pendulums into complex geometric drawings. Set in motion, it’s mesmerising to watch, and each drawing is unique.
Other mesmerizing concepts included the ‘15 Sampler Drawings’: a kaleidoscopic grid of 15 panels featuring music, film and art from diverse times, the ‘Mindless drawing’: sensilab drawbots with different operating instructions activated in an oval arena to express their code, via a sharpie, and the ‘Sound drawing for DRAW Space and Jon Cage’: where visitors climb a ladder to drop quandong nuts into site-specific marble-run slaloms constructed from post consumer packaging. The wooden marbles make melodies as they trace through to the floor.
In layman terms, a mere hour later and I left with the knowledge of drawing machines from the 19 th Century, the visual stimulation of re-used materials into aesthetic shapes and sounds, a mini talk on the link between Astrophysics and origami, that origami was the birth of earthquake proof buildings in Japan, learning a new word: ‘fractal’: patterns recurring at progressively smaller scales, as well as taking home my very own customised drawing.
Gary’s drawing practice of making, thinking, feeling, observing, touching, listening, teaching and drawing, encapsulated.
The beauty of the exhibition is that Gary is onsite all times to create the drawings and the soundscapes, and to have the conversations.
A terrific experience.
Exhibition: Friday September 8 – Sunday October 1st
For more information visit: www.drawspace.org