Another Dimension – On Contemporary Drawing
“Drawing deserves our consideration and attention. It always did.” Mike Pinnington on the ongoing elevation of a medium…
Drawing. It’s something we all do, until we don’t. When asked, all too early, to put aside so-called childish things – fairy tales, toys, play in general – art, and often drawing specifically, goes with them. It is the sensible few that continue beyond the age such things are thought reasonable. As we get older, of course, a few realise that, in jettisoning such things, something important was lost, and so trickle back to pencil and paper for the pure enjoyment of it. Or, as we might put it today, mindfulness.
Perhaps this universality of experience – drawing as something we all share in childhood – and the idea of it as a hobby, is why it has been so long thought of as ‘less than’ painting, sculpture, and other mediums. That, and the fact it is also seen, even or especially within the art sector, as preliminary, preparatory – merely a step along the way to what might become the ‘actual’ finished artwork. Even when drawing, in one form or another, is the intended end point, it has to be given a specific collective artsy term to elevate the results; so, we call them works on paper.
But, recent years have seen drawing promoted, its status raised from a secondary, supporting role, to that of primary medium in and of itself. This is due, perhaps, to a number of circumstances: people picking up pencil and sketchbook (either for the first time, or first time in years) during the lockdowns; or it being a symptom of the post-internet age, a reconnection with more tactile, analogue methods – and a growing malaise, even unease with, digital platforms. As noted by Ed Krčma, “art historian Michael Newman suggests [that] the meaning of drawing’s specific qualities is conditioned by the field of other visual technologies with which it shares a space at any one time.”
For all of these reasons and less quantifiable ones, it can be said that drawing, one of the oldest forms of artistic expression, is having a prolonged moment. This has been evidenced by a marked upturn in discussion of the medium, manifested by major publications and exhibitions dedicated to its immediacy, versatility, and the sheer freedom of expression it allows. One such notable champion, called Drawing Paper, emerged in Liverpool in 2010. Created by artists Mike Carney and Jon Barraclough, it has proved a much-loved space for drawing in all its forms, and has sprouted an occasional exhibiting element, The Drawing (Paper) Show.
Barraclough remains involved. Joined by Colette Lilley and Sarah Jane Richards, this year has seen the Drawing Paper publish its 10th edition (alongside a parallel exhibition as part of the Independents Biennial). Selected and curated by Barraclough, Lilley, Richards, and guest Curtis Holder, its pages represent an impressively wide and sometimes surprising variety of work by more than 50 artists. It makes for an eloquent demonstration of the medium’s flexibility, and the possibility for innovation it – perhaps uniquely – offers.
From the resolutely traditional to what we might call expanded understandings of drawing – and everything in between – it provides an international insight into its state and status today. Simultaneously, it challenges the viewer to question what can be categorised as drawing.
Reassuringly, traditional landscape and portraiture figure. Yuxuan Hou’s Keston Ponds (2024) richly renders the lakes of Keston Common in graphite on paper. The haunting ruin of a territory depicted in Chris Shaw Hughes’ Gaza – Welcome Home (2025), speaks for itself, and demonstrates drawing’s aptitude for widescreen, coruscating reportage. Emotionally charged portraits by Kaye Hodges (The Rejection Letter, 2025) and Cristina Celestini (Metamorphosis (dreaming after Veronese) 2025), capture their sitters so that we might assume they had been made in another era altogether (even as the mood of the latter’s subject subtly transitions in echoes across the picture plane).
If Belinda Yee’s striking Graphic Profile (fold 1, 2023), looks as though it harks back to the peak Op-Art of Bridget Riley, it is in fact a kind of portrait itself, made, says the artist, “by tracing rock faces around Sydney Harbour and using those profile lines as templates.” A meditation on deep time and the body – Yee uses her own breaths to guide her mark-making – it takes us way beyond the dimensions of the folded paper on which it is presented.
Now firmly in expanded drawing territory, Kelly Cumberland takes us further still, with Helix Silicium v0.1 (2025). Made with etched silicone rubber and looking like a warped ship’s propellor, suspended from the ceiling in a gallery setting, it introduces a third dimension to proceedings, pushing drawing firmly into kinetic sculpture territory.
If such works ask whether or not we can think of them as ‘drawings’ at all, the inclusion of Caroline Gorick’s Evening Light (2024), made using oil paint, may prove a bridge too far for some. In a recent review of Gorick’s exhibition, After Hours, which featured this very work, I never once used the term drawing. Time and again, I referred to this and other works in the show as paintings. And, yet, here it is. This brilliant small-scale work – be it drawing, painting, or both(?) – adds a frisson of controversy to Drawing Paper 10. A talking point among many others.
But let us not get too hung up on such things – we’re in the realms of contemporary art after all. We’re meant to disagree occasionally. What I think we can agree on, however, as demonstrated by the artists mentioned here, and many others besides, is that drawing deserves our consideration and attention. It always did.
Mike Pinnington
A full list of Drawing Paper 2025 artists can be found here; Drawing (Paper) Show 2025 was on display at Bridewell Studios & Gallery 11 July – 31 July, 2025
Images, from top: Gaza – Welcome Home (2025), Chris Shaw Hughes; Drawing Paper #1; The Rejection Letter (2025), Kaye Hodges; Graphic Profile (fold 1, 2023), Belinda Yee; Evening Light (2024), Caroline Gorick. All works courtesy the artists and Drawing(Paper)Show 25
