Launch Pad: The Drawing Project
Emma Sumner appreciates how one artist is exploring drawing whilst utilising Castlefield Gallery’s new launching pad…
Since its establishment in 1984, Castlefield Gallery has played a fundamental role in the development of emerging contemporary artists in the north-west and beyond. Eager to help promote artists at key stages of their careers, a recent addition to their annual programme is a series of short ‘Launch Pad’ exhibitions, which nestle in-between the gallery’s main events and projects.
A testing ground for the production and display of contemporary art, Launch Pad provides an opportunity for selected Castlefield Associate members to show their work at the gallery. But, as Interim Programme Manager Matthew Pendergast explains, it “isn’t just an opportunity for someone to have an exhibition; the idea is to find an artist, or an idea, that’s just right for the gallery programme… Launch Pad is here to help artists move from one stage of their career to another, but only when they are ready to.”
This latest edition, The Drawing Project, has been curated by artist Jenny Core, whose practice investigates the potential and diverse possibilities of drawing as a medium, not just as a process. Looking to explore these notions further, Core has stepped back from what she describes to be “a self indulgent practice” to examine the current trends in contemporary drawing in the north-west.
Starting with a list three pages long, Core refined her proposal to six artists to exhibit alongside her own work. “I picked the artists because their practices are all very different… but a diverse drawing practice remains the underlying notion of each work.” Encouraging her fellow artists to respond to the gallery space and to fully utilise the opportunity Launch Pad provides has culminated in an enticing exhibition of new and pre-existing works, with an innovative reaction to space.
Minimal but considered, the first floor gallery exhibits Mary Griffiths‘ work next to Core’s delicate graphite and pastel shade watercolour drawings. Griffith’s practice is almost drawing in reverse; by burnishing the graphite into the surface with a spoon the image is only revealed as she scrapes away the surface.
The gallery’s dramatic double-height space has been filled with Lesley Halliwell’s consuming Shrinking Violet, 2759 Minutes. Drawn on four, one-metre sections, this is the first time Haliwell has seen the piece as a whole; surely an exciting moment for the artist given the 2759 minutes of continuous biro scrawling it took to create the work.
Adjacent (lower gallery) are Sophia Crilly’s meticulous recreations of researched images, letters and sketch book pages. Crilly’s reproduction of Sol Le Witt’s encouraging letter to an early career Eva Hesse feels particularly pertinent to the ethos of the project.
Taking up the central space of the lower gallery is Claire Weetman’s Watermark: An intervention in four directions. Consisting of four, floor height screens playing recorded footage of the water drawings Weetman undertook during a residency in Istanbul, the water slowly evaporates as the artist paints.
Quietly surveying Wheetman’s films are Jenny Steele’s sculptural drawings of post colonial architecture. Simply atmospheric, Steele’s sensitive use of colour gives the viewer a sense of daylight hitting the buildings’ surfaces.
At the far end of the gallery sit three plinths with one light bulb balancing on each, the work of Hondartza Fraga. Interested in using everyday objects, Fraga creates a unique dialogue between the remote and the domestic. A closer look at the shadows cast by the light bulbs reveals Fraga’s drawings of completely unrelated and re-imagined spaces.
Castlefield is one of the UK’s most active and successful organisations for developing emerging contemporary artists and their practice. Selecting its Launch Pad exhibitions to help promote artists looking to progress to the next level, Core’s exhibition is a fantastic demonstration of exactly what the scheme looks to achieve for its participants.
As Matthew Pendergast points out, “Castlefield Gallery is looking to seek out and understand what those gaps and how to help artists get to the next level… helping emerging artists is just what Castlefield does.”
Emma Sumner
Launch Pad is showing at Castlefield Gallery until Sunday 23 February, Wed-Sun, 1-6pm, free entry
