DRAWING: Transformative Matter - Material Trace
ABOUT the Drawing Research Group at Arts University Bournemouth
The DRAWING: Transformative Matter, Material Trace research group is led by Professor of Drawing, Siân Bowen and brings together twenty members from Fine Art, Illustration, Animation and Makeup for Media and Performance at Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) along with invited external researchers. These members include academic and technical staff, PhD students, AUB alumni and guest researchers, all of whom engage in practice-based research relating to innovative approaches to drawing.
Operating within and across discipline-specific boundaries, the group’s activities facilitate investigations into the capacity of materials to change or to be changed – and, in turn, to signify meaning, articulate ideas, convey knowledge and encourage reflective experimentation. AUB’s CRAB Drawing Studio together with the AUB Paper Archive, act as platforms for discussion and production, offering opportunities for collaborative research. The group is expanded by members currently carrying out practice-based PhD projects which focus on drawing. Dialogue with external national and international research groups, individuals and institutions, is actively sought.
DRAWING: Transformative Matter - Material Trace
Research is driven by creative practitioners across AUB, and beyond, interested to debate ideas relating to the conceptual potential of the mutability of materials - extending to concerns which interrogate the unpredictability of the ephemeral and the impermanence of form. The research is undertaken against a backdrop of increased theoretical interest in alchemy as a means to understand processes of change and ever-shifting intellectual, cultural, and social landscapes.
Collective and individual activities undertaken by the group expands current AUB research interests which connect the practice of drawing to: states of flux and real time events; site specificity and bound and unbound spaces; light and the ephemeral; tensions between processes of change and structural stability; repetition, revision and deletion.
Research themes are underpinned by theoretical concerns relating to the materiality of form as an intermediary between the senses and the intellect - and in the multiple ways in which culture mediates sensation. Ongoing debates include: First, ethical dilemmas relating to the relationship between choice of materials used to create drawings and the environmental impact of their extraction, production and employment; Second, the ethics of producing, preserving and conserving drawings which utilise fugitive materials.
PhD projects at AUB that focus on drawing include Sayoko Takahata's current exploration of the Japanese concept of "Ma" (間), and those successfully completed by Justine Moss and Juliette Losq. Group member Anthony Dixon is currently undertaking his PhD research project, 'Here is Where we Meet (Body, Matter & Things)' at the University of Brighton. PhD project proposals which connect with the group’s core research themes are welcome.
Ongoing collaborations include those with the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford; The Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew and the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies.
CONTACT
If you have any questions or would like to share information please email the group using the form below
