Contemporary Line and the Multivalent Practice

Studio brief

An opportunity for art students to examine the line as a pure element and how to use established drawing languages to encode meaning in art work across multivalent practices.

Isolation and manipulation of the line as a pure element is foundational to many artists’ practices in the contemporary period. Artists have also used established drawing languages as a way of encoding meaning in their work. This studio examines questions of where contemporary art meets contemporary drawing within multivalent practices that employ a wide use of media and reference.

We’ll attempt through research and practice to understand what it means to achieve a 'drawing consciousness', to apply a consideration of line across photography, painting, sculpture, print and video.

We examine multivalent practices - their meanings, personalities, archives and materiality - to see what binds or 'constellates' such practices.

We’ll develop a group project and exhibition at London's Centre for Recent Drawing, and some students may work in a residency situation at DRAWinternational at Caylus (South of France - additional cost). Field trips will engage with ICA and Tate’s public programmes and with smaller spaces, as they arise. Students are expected to critique such events in their own time.

Art students devise an ongoing exhibition/performance/archive/collaboration and beyond this, demonstrate engagement with the issues and production of the practice of the Contemporary Line and what it means to have a multivalent practice.