RE- is the title for a new collaborative publication project with @metapoiesis_richard_nash and colleagues and practitioners from the Royal College of Art.
RE: word-forming element meaning “back, back from, back to the original place;” also “again, anew, once more,” also conveying the notion of “undoing” or “backward,” …
I am delighted to be invited by drawingisfree_ org, to join 14 other practitioners as part of the Drawing Projects UK PechaKucha style Symposium discussing the impact of lockdown on practice and drawing.
The sketchbook and its inherent mobility are and remain to be an essential and consistent aspect of my practice and working life. The sketchbooks created in lockdown became a surprisingly expansive format to engage with and outline journeys without moving.
‘In the Future …. How will we Create?’ took place from 9 November to 14 November 2021 at the UK Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai. The Royal College of Art is the Heritage Partner of the UK Pavilion, having a 170-year history of shared heritage with world exhibitions, going back to the first Expo, The Great Exhibition of 1851. The RCA’s contribution to the UK Pavilion will bring together a wide range of interdisciplinary projects from staff, current students and recent graduates. I developed and delivered ‘A City in a Day’ project as part of my ongoing research. Four local schools with approximately 20 students participated in an hour’s workshop, each hour a different age of the city’s development.
I am pleased to release the video of A City Seven Days project produced at FutureLab, Shanghai 2019.
FutureLab was an initiative from WestBund Art Center drawing together art and design educators from around the world. I was invited in my role as Head of Programme of Graduate Diploma in Art and Design at the Royal College of Art to create a project demonstrating synergies between degree level and primary level teaching approaches and methodologies to creativity in student-centred learning.
My ongoing creative thinking and learning research work with FunDrawing initiated the ‘city’ as a vehicle or model for creative engagement. The workshop investigates how creativity can be enabled through action-based teaching and learning approaches to embed and encourage creativity in the curriculum for primary and early secondary learners. The projects’s basic premise is based on the creative and imaginative potential of the humble cardboard box, focusing on proven alternative approach models to creative and trans-disciplinary engagement to provide an immersive experience and critical takeaways from skills-based teaching of art and design.
I was recently invited by Emre Altindağ, PhD researcher and editor for an interview in the first edition of Memory and Light and to be the keynote speaker at the accompanying conference in August 2021. Memory and Light is an international artist-led collective and new publication for illustrators, graphic novelists, and storytellers. I discussed with Emre the role of narrative and storytelling as a key tool in my approach to sketchbooks and my practice. Article pdf here.
Starting in 2017, Fun Drawing is an ongoing China/UK early-years learning development initiative and collaboration.
I am looking forward to engaging with the next phase of this project in the coming months.
Publishing Self was a 40 minute discussion around the nature and positioning of the portfolio as a tool and platform.
Creating a progression portfolio can be a mystifying experience. How do you create a compelling narrative about you? This talk brings together Gary Clough, Richard Nash and renowned graphic designer and publisher Tony Brook to discuss their individual practices and parallels between the progression portfolio and art & design publishing. This is an opportunity to join Gary, Richard and Tony in a conversation that draws on aspects of publishing, art direction, editorial design, curation and critical writing. Hear some of their ‘trade secrets’ and then interact with them to ask your own questions.
The Brooklyn Art Library is home to the world’s largest collection of artists sketchbooks. I completed one of the project sketchbooks earlier this year and have just sent it off to join the archive of over 30,000. It was a project I’d followed over the years and I am pleased to have now added my own sketchbook contribution.
I am very excited to have been invited to exhibit my work at Painters + Collection 2021, at Nakata Museum, Japan. 21 artists from Japan, Korea, Mexico and the UK are showing work alongside the museum’s collection of 19th and 20th-century paintings, curated by Yuko Kunichika.
Gary Clough – Artist and International Education practitioner 