Drawing on the Walls

Author: Courtney Johnston, Director

Over Easter we opened our new exhibition of abstraction from the collection, Short Traditions. Kids from our Dee Club got in on the act by helping install two of the works.

The starting point

Cat talks Dee Club through Kerrie Poliness's work

Choosing points

More choosing points

A close-up of a carefully positioned point

Midway

The finished work: Kerrie Poliness, 'Black O', 1997. Jim Barr and Mary Barr long term loan collection, with Ian Scott's 'Lattice No. 49: Colours on Black', 1978 in the background.

Last year when we showed three of Kerrie Poliness's Black O wall drawings, we ran an open installation, letting visitors watch as the works were drawn onto the walls (Cat Auburn led the installation—you can read her accounts here and here, and watch a timelapse of the installation on YouTube.)

There are two more of Poliness's drawings included in Short Traditions: Abstraction from The Dowse Collection, which opened on Good Friday. While this time we didn't run an open installation, we did capitalise on the fact that Dee Club (our after-school art programme) was in the building just in time to pick out the all important starting points, which dictate how the finished drawing will (visually) warp and move on the walls.

In this slideshow of images you can see Dee Club working with Cat to pick the anchor points, and the development of the work from the yellow chalk outline through to the finished glory.