TBC Artists' Collective: A Message To... Houston

Charley Peters, A Message To... Paul Neal 'Red' Adair (2011), Folded Paper on Wall

TBC's latest project, A Message To... Houston has now been completed and images of the installation of the works by myself, Laura Davidson and Beverley Bennett are now available at 12-pages.com.

My collaboration with Davidson was inspired by research into the firefighter 'Red' Adair. Davidson interpreted a set of instructions supplied by me relating to a series of drawings made from folded paper for the project (above), which are installed in my studio in London. On the 25th of August Davidson recreated the works in Houston, Texas, and scattered their subsequently burned remnants along the park in the middle of Heights Boulevard, which divides the lanes of traffic travelling across town (below). The work is the latest in TBC's ongoing exploration of drawing as performative, interventionist or documentary medium, moving the act of solitary mark making out of the studio and into a collaborative, interactive environment. For more information about the project click here.

Laura Davidson and Charley Peters, A Message to Paul Neal 'Red' Adair' (2011)

Project News: 'Slice' Visual Essay, a collaboration with Beverley Bennett

Charley Peters, Sketches for Slice (2011), Pencil Crayon on Paper

I am currently collaborating with artist Beverley Bennett to produce a visual essay as part of the publication associated with the international Slice project, featuring artists from London and Lahore. During a studio session this week we generated a series of drawings in response to the performative 'drawing in space' produced by TBC Artists' Collective in Catherine Wheel Alley, London. The works produced this week in the studio will be developed over the forthcoming weeks and published in September to coincide with the opening of the Slice exhibition at Rich Mix, London.

Project News: Radicals on TBC Online Project Space

Charley Peters, Inter/Zone 01-04 (2011)

The latest issue of 12-Pages, Radicals, is now available to view via TBC's online project space. Edited by Beverley Bennett with design by James Tuitt, the Radicals issue took as its inspiration the Romantics whose radical ideas revolutionised 19th century thinking, and invited artists to consider corresponding figures of the last twenty years.

The figure referenced in my work for Radicals was writer William S. Burroughs. Inter/Zone, the works created for the Radicals issue of 12-Pages take their name from the working title of Burroughs' Naked Lunch. The series is generated using Burrough’s cut-up literary technique, which provided a non-linear alternative to traditional reading and writing systems. In the works made for Radicals new drawings were cut vertically down their centre and pieced randomly together to make new works where lines of varying weight and direction fuse together to create new visual states of being.

Charley Peters, Inter/Zone 05-06 (2011)

The cut-up is actually closer to the facts of perception than representational painting. Take a walk down a city street and put down what you have just seen on canvas. You have seen a person cut in two by a car, bits and pieces of street signs and advertisements, reflections from shop windows – a montage of fragments. Writing is still confined to the representational straitjacket of the novel … consciousness is a cut up. Every time you walk down the street or look out of the window, your stream of consciousness is cut by random factors.
William S. Burroughs

Project News: Hybrid (Coming Soon)

The next issue of 12-Pages, the online publication from TBC Artists' Collective, will be available from 8th March. Edited by TBC member Beverley Bennett, the forthcoming issue is entitled Hybrid and will include new work by TBC artists, invited guests and from open submission. I have submitted three new digital drawings, which are a development of my recent Ben-Day dot paintings, which will be seen first in Hybrid on the 12-Pages Online Project Space.

Project News: A Message To...

A Message To... Ann Oakley (2011)

A Message To...

On 22 January 2011 members of TBC Artists' Collective - Beverley Bennett, Laura Davidson, Paul Mendez, James Tuitt and myself - travelled to Oxford to complete the first part of a long-term project, 'A Message To...' 

Each artist made a piece of interventionist work inspired by someone who has contributed to the cultural life of Oxford. My work, a drawing in dirt for sociologist Ann Oakley, who has written extensively about women's experiences as housewives and mothers, was installed in a display cabinet in the Pitt Rivers Museum. 

The cabinet, on the first floor of the museum, is directly underneath a vitrine containing ethnographic objects relating to marriage. Oakley graduated from Somerville College, Oxford in 1965, where she is now a Fellow.

 

The site of the dirt drawing intervention in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

Trace Elements

Trace Elements opens on 20th November as part of The Show London. TBC Artists' Collective's latest exhibition project, Trace Elements will continue to develop the themes outlined in Delineation, exploring drawing through erasure, repetition, accumulation, trace, memory and the interruption of surfaces.

Project News: The Show / Trace Elements

Along with my fellow TBC artists Beverley Bennett, Laura Davidson and Paul Mendez, I will be participating in The Show. The exhibition of drawings, 'Trace Elements' selected by curator Eddie Otchere will open 20th November as part of The Show's cultural events programme on Millbank.  The Show presents 'the freshest concepts and objects amongst the spectacle of art, music and magic' (theshowlondon.com)

More information to follow...

Jim Mooney - Critical Responses to Delineation

Dr Jim Mooney in conversation with members of TBC Artists' Collective

On Sunday 31st October TBC was joined in The Crypt Gallery by Dr Jim Mooney, Reader in the Theory and Practice of Fine Art at Middlesex University, who led a discussion based on his responses to the exhibition Delineation, Contemporary Dialogues with Drawing. During the afternoon Jim shared his critical observations of the curatorial policy of the show and led the artists through the gallery in order to give a close reading of each work and identify underlying shared concerns among the exhibiting artists.

TBC would like to extend their thanks to Jim for his insightful and generous contribution to the exhibition programme. A transcript of the discussion will constitute part of the catalogue for Delineation, Contemporary Dialogues with Drawing, which TBC will be writing over the forthcoming months. This publication will also contain a transcript of yesterday's panel discussion led by artist John Timberlake and featuring TBC members Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters, Laura Davidson and Paul Mendez, as well as a collection of critical essays addressing current concerns in artists' drawing practices.