Sketchbooks are an intrinsic and integral part of my practice, a place where I collate, record and synthesize viewed and remembered experiences.
I am currently obsessed with comic book like hieroglyphs, in search of or potentially reliant on a visual equivalent to the Rosetta Stone, combining the recognized, the invented and the possible. These draw from a range of real and imagined destinations and cultural references, many from regular visits to China.
New work in progress, drawings and prints developed from recent journeys in China.
As part of the South East Open Studios over two weekends 15-18 and 22-25 June, I will be showing alongside Heather Haythornthwaite and Sarah King at the Hazelnut Press.
The first UK exhibition of the Trace Engines project, which included a solo exhibition of drawings and mono prints at the AIP Gallery, Redtory Art Zone, Guangzhou in 2015, opens on the 25th November 2016 at the Rochester Art Gallery, Kent.
The private view is on the 24th November from 6:30pm and there will also be a series of workshops and artist’s talks that accompany the exhibition. This current show, from 24.11.16 to 20.02.17, brings together new work and pieces produced during my residency in China.
‘Trace Engines is a series of amalgamated drawings that on the one hand suggest a design or plan for something to come, and on the other seem like the residue of something that has already been. In this, they constitute a process of mediation where the acts and media of their creation – the drawing, tracing and mono printing – become iterative expressions that model an as yet unknown object.’
Engine mapping, 2015
Engine series, ink on paper, 2015.
A series of drawings and constructs developed through collage, the final images are produced by destroying the original drawings through a process similar to monoprint – releasing the ink to transpose the image onto another surface as residue, after image or stain. Full set of series images here
Mule, 2015
Gary Clough – Artist and International Education practitioner 