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Using close visual analysis of drawings, artist interviews, critical analysis and exegesis, Drawing Investigations examines how artists use drawing as an investigative tool to reveal information that would otherwise remain unseen and unnoticed.
How does drawing add shape to ideas? How does the artist accommodate to challenges and restraints of a particular environment? To what extent is a drawing complementary and continuous with its subject and where is it disruptive and provocative? Casey and Davies address these questions while focusing on artists working collaboratively and the use of drawing in challenging or unexpected environments.
Drawing Investigations evaluates the emergence of a way of thinking among an otherwise disconnected group of artists by exploring commonalities in the application of analytical drawing to the natural world, urban environment, social forces and lived experience. Examples represent a spectrum of research in international contexts: an oceanographic Institute in California, the archives of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, the Antarctic Survey, geothermal research in Japan and the Kurdish diaspora in Iraq. Issues are situated in the contemporary theory and practice of drawing including relationships to historical precedents.
By exploring drawing's capacity to capture and describe experience, to sharpen visual faculties and to bridge embodied and conceptual knowledge, Drawing Investigations offers a fresh critical perspective on contemporary drawing practice.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Drawing on the past: a historical context for graphic investigations
2. Seeing Inside: drawing in the body
3. Visualising the Invisible: drawing mathematics and the cosmos
4. On Unfamiliar Ground: drawing environment, place and space
5. Traces of Life: drawing history and culture
6. Front Lines: drawing war, conflict and the law
7. Drawing Conclusions
Concluding Remarks
Bibliography
Sarah Casey is an artist and Professor of Fine Art at Lancaster University UK. Gerry Davies is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Drawing at Lancaster University, UK.
"Drawing is not just an art form: it is a way of both thinking of and being in the world. How drawing is used by scientists, anthropologists, medical researchers – and how artists have become involved in those disciplines – is a rich and complex subject. This book, with its attentiveness to the lives and particular approaches of artists and other people who draw to understand, is invaluable. Not only does it show how drawing can be used as an investigative tool, it also broadens and deepens our understanding of drawing as an art form."
– Tony Godfrey, Independent Scholar, Philippines
"This is a fascinating and timely study into the diverse and dynamic practices of drawing. Few practitioner-academics are as well placed as Casey and Davies to roam so broadly and imaginatively into the rich territory of drawing. What is so rewarding about this particular volume is the diversity of perspectives – from the linear objectivity required by the archaeologist to the graphic innovation pioneered by contemporary artists. A much-needed addition to the rather under-nourished field of enquiry into drawing and its practices."
– Professor Paul Gough, Vice-Chancellor of Arts University Bournemouth, UK
