A Modest Show: ‘Drawing In Breathing Out’ at Rogue Artists’ Studios

Charu Vallabhbhai

Writer and curator Charu Vallabhbhai reviews ‘Drawing In Breathing Out’, at Rogue Artists’ Studios until 4 September 2022, part of A Modest Show, the collateral programme to British Art Show 9. Read on to discover artist curator Mike Chavez-Dawson’s text-Rorschach give-away to win yourself an original artwork, and find out about stellar geometries, precious elements and the connectivity of performance along the way.

‘Drawing In Breathing Out’ is an exhibition in Rogue Project Space at Rogue Artists’ Studios which brings together the work of ten Manchester based artists exploring a range of subjects and themes in their work. Common elements in the rich content of this show ­­­are referenced in the exhibition title: breath, inward motion, the marks made by hand using different media on any variety of surfaces. They form the basis for an exhibition of artworks that draw the eye, again and again, across the space. The wealth of surfaces, detail, media, and thought-provoking narratives comprise a show that truly delights. In keeping with the programme theme of A Modest Show, in which the visitor is invited to ‘eat Manchester artists’, this exhibition presents a feast for the eyes.

I visited the exhibition in May 2022, a year and half after British Art Show 9 was originally programmed for presentation in Manchester, launching the four-venue touring survey exhibition that would later visit Wolverhampton, Aberdeen and Plymouth. Resulting from various scheduling changes, BAS9 is now three quarters of the way through its journey. Meanwhile the artists, curators, venues and studios of Manchester have come together to develop an outstanding collateral programme to BAS9. Here, more is definitely more, and in a welcome coup for Manchester, British Art Show 9 has doubled in size through its wider local artist-led programme, A Modest Show.

I entered Rogue Project Space, a large gallery on the ground floor of Rogue Artists’ Studios, in relative quiet, allowing myself time to sweep the partitioned area and gain an overview of the exhibited art. Many, though not all, are works on paper. Opposite the gallery entrance are a series of drawings in pencil and watercolour by Rachel Goodyear. They are accompanied by three hand-drawn animation works presented on screens that transform the stillness of the scenes in her works on paper into circular narratives, looping with no beginning or end.

This is emphasised in Dance (2020), where three identical women in short red slips ­­­­join hands and walk in a circle against a black backdrop. Their heads are adorned with conical hats that extend to cover their faces. References made here are numerous, with images from various sources brought together in a collage of the artist’s imagination. From the obvious, such as Ku Klux Klan uniform, to the more obscure 1981 video for the single ‘Sat in Your Lap’. In the latter, Kate Bush and two faceless dancers perform in white conical hats, Bush in a ballet slip and tutu. Goodyear’s dancers in the dark bear an element of ritual, whilst the formation they move in resembles a section of a country dance. In Maypole (Wolves) (2022), a work on paper, three wolves are tied to the waist of an unknown woman whose back is turned, hiding her identity, like the female in a folk tale or myth from the wild woods.

Performance is a strong element in the ‘Drawing In Breathing Out’ programme. With a series of talks and events scheduled throughout the life of the exhibition, the launch delivered three tantalising performances by Mike Chavez-Dawson, Simon Woolham and Richard Shields.

For Mike Chavez-Dawson’s A Quiet Setting of the Feasting Tables Act 1 of 2 that incorporates Dining In Dining Out (The Curator’s Table) and The Feasting Table, the third room in the gallery was occupied by a sculptural installation covered in polythene sheet where I was able to identify a mixture of media that included a series of Rorschach inkblots dedicated to each of the artists in the exhibition. As part of the performance, the narrator explained that the installation was in fact ‘...a testing of the testing machine with a testing machine…’ and that:

‘…Though the artist has been producing his own unique Rorschach, the text Rorschach … sees the artist as curator, write the other artist’s names in his own handwriting via black poster paint directly on card. This is then pressed together – whilst doing this the artist attempts to tune into the named person … and imbue their attitude – through a shamanic inscription …’

The performance unfolded as an experiment that would not be out of place in a medieval tower; part science, part sorcery, employing smoke and mirror lenses.

At the rear of the gallery is a large-scale drawing compiled of paper sheets pinned to the gallery wall. It formed a hand-drawn backdrop to Simon Woolham’s performance, a rendition of self-penned heartfelt songs, delivered together with a community choir. I imagined Woolham as a Billy Bragg of the north, with a repertoire that extends to creating his own performance sets - rubbings of the Rogue Artists’ Studios building and based on Manchester’s heritage of tradespeople and workers. These emerge from Woolham’s ‘Art Work Placement’ project, informed by his research towards generating narratives that elucidate the traditions of institutional place. He and the choir sang: ‘You’re drawing lines around me… walking far behind me … telling stories to me … singing songs beside me’. It remains ambiguous whether the stories and the singing were of hope or of fear.

Andrew McDonald has been creating hand-drawn digital animations for over two decades, compiling moving images out of hundreds of illustrations. No newcomer to the British Art Show, his work John’s County (2003) was selected for British Art Show 6, presented when Manchester’s venues last hosted the survey show 16 years ago. Here, Lost in the Spectacle (2022) could be considered a statement of that experience of immersion onto the stage of the curated, half-decade defining statement of artistic practice. The artist in his own moment (a performance of sorts) having ‘made it’ is ultimately caged in the process.

Richard Shields’ lament, on the other hand, embodied the reality of not ‘making it’.  In his work The Fall of the Artist Opera, performance, film, drawing and a range of mixed media tell the tale of an art-handling technician striving to be recognised by the institutions who provide the wages for his labour that supplement his creative practice: ‘Where once was the hope of solo shows, Where he is now no one knows’ mourned the narrator. 

Returning to the exhibition itself, Jack Brown shows two series of works on paper that comment or draw on material of the everyday. ‘Community Portraits’ (2022) depicts the faces of people who, eyes closed, have silly features and rude statements drawn on, pranks forming alternative locations for childish graffiti. In The grease marks left by passenger’s hair on a bus window (2018-2022), digital prints are created, based on Brown’s observations of the temporary imprints made by commuters and travellers placing their un-washed hair against glass.

While text, poetry, and script inform many works in this exhibition, Louise Adkins in her text drawing Inhale  pause  Exhale (2022) applies coloured pencil on Awagami paper to build a multi-layered meditation on the act of smoking. She takes statements and presents them in different text styles, perhaps taken from a font menu. The graphic element of this work is reminiscent of different cigarette brands themselves, where font and colour were, in cases such as Silk Cut adverts, a direct identifier of a particular cigarette.

In Mary Griffith’s For this we go out dark nights (2022), graphite has been applied directly onto the wall surface of Rogue Project Space. A material more commonly used on paper here assumes a solid appearance, as if a block of shiny carbon were embedded into the fabric of the building, whilst simultaneously bearing silky and slippery qualities, like the surface of ice where sub-zero temperature traps the chemical compound that would otherwise flow as water or rise as steam. The title of this artwork is taken from the first line of Rebecca Elson’s poem ‘Let there always be light (searching for dark matter)’. Griffith’s geometric linear drawing creates a three-dimensional image inscribed into the graphite to reveal that it is in fact a thin layer under which the wall remains. Elson was an astronomer, researcher, writer and poet whose work centred on a number of subjects including galaxy formation. Her own findings were related to the substance of carbon: one of the elements critical for all living matter, solid and impenetrable to permanent light.

Lesley Halliwell incorporates precious elements into her compositions of drawing and paintings, using gold and copper leaf. This selection of works includes G(u)ilty: half domes (2016) in which pencil and lacquer are added to a partially gilded paper surface. Larger paintings by Halliwell, with their repeated patterned forms, make a visual connection with Chavez-Dawson’s Rorschach tests as they remind us of the form of a butterfly. This is referenced in His muted geometry mating on her virtuoso butterfly wings (2017), perhaps a nod to the necessity by which butterflies have evolved with colour and iridescence for their life’s purpose – to reproduce, while for us they provoke awe as they rise into the air with fleeting, fluttering grace and beauty.

On the wall adjacent to the gallery’s entrance and exit are Ruby Tingle’s delicate collage works on specialist paper, leather and, in one case, what appears to be part of a book cover, which incorporate cut out illustrations of wild-life and objects. Removed from the context they were printed into, Tingle creates fantasy creatures suspended in apparent limbo.

The launch of ‘Drawing In Breathing Out’ coincided with Rogue Artists’ Studios’ annual open studio event, allowing public access to 57,000 square feet of studio space and the work of up to eighty-five artists working in the former Varna Steet school buildings. The atmosphere at the launch event was charged with a mixture of joy and wonder, particularly as the performances progressed into the afternoon offering moments of intrigue, alliance and wry humour.

Between the start and end schedule of each performance, the audience could return to the fixed artworks of the exhibition - an opportunity to see again, perhaps taking another perspective. ‘Drawing In Breathing Out’ is curated with subtlety, intelligence and sheer boldness in drawing together an outstanding selection of works whose themes interweave like a complex web, drawing the viewer in. It’s a simply breath-taking addition to A Modest Show and mustn’t be missed.

www.rastudios.co.uk

Manchester-based artist curator Mike Chavez-Dawson from Rogue Artists’ Studios is offering the above bespoke A2 unframed text-Rorschach to one lucky reader/viewer of the Fourdrinier. Here the artist has scripted the words (the Fourdrinier) in his own handwriting, then carefully folded and pressed to create a unique piece whilst visualising the poetic prowess of the writers on this platform. The paint used is a premixed poster-paint inspired by Yves Klein blue.

In order to be added to the lucky dip for the piece, write us a short description of what you can see in the Rorschach, in no more than 500 words and email it to Mike Chavez-Dawson at: mikechavezdawson@yahoo.com

Deadline: 1 July 2022

Winner announced: August issue of the Fourdrinier