For the final part to our workshop at the National Gallery, we held an exhibition in the Drawing room inside the National Gallery.
We had each made our own responses to the National Gallery and so this exhibition was the result of research and development.
The installation of the show took place the day before the opening of the show from 10am until 6pm when the gallery closed.
After clearing the space of tables, chairs, and pencil marks on the wall we took some time to decide who’s work was going to go.
I quickly decided that I would like my work to be more of a response to the space as well as the painting it was responding to.
At the back of the space on the right was wall entirely covered in a set of large rectangular mirrors.
I felt the mirror connected with my work alongside the response I had made to a painting whose theme was the hair and routine. As we use mirrors on a daily basis, I felt this would be another layer to the work, in which the viewer would be more of a part the drawing.
I covered my hand in black pigment using an oil pastel then began tapping and shifting my finger prints around on the surface of the mirror. My fellow classmates became interested in what I was doing and asked if they could participate too. I enjoyed the face that people wanted to be a part of the work too, and share the experience of making marks in this way.
We made the drawing to be denser with the finger prints at one end – graduating to fewer marks at the other. I wanted to play around with the movement of the marks, briging the link between the body and drawing through traces of ones repeated action over a long period of time.
By responding the space in this way, I am defining for myself and others the relationship we have with it through the event of making marks which our hands.
Once finished making the fingerprints I set to work on installing the hand collages onto the mirrored surface. I tried to orchestrate the hands to give the effect of them dancing around on the mirror, whilst engaging in the routine of playing with hair in a variety of ways.
With the hands in position I started to weave red thread in between and through the paper hands, so the drawing became more of an installation with myself performing the gestures related to drawing and the brushing motions of the hair.
Whilst installing the drawing, using the thread I felt that my movements were also a part of the piece. The unravelling of the thread and weaving actions I was making are connected strongly to the action made when drawing. It felt like a dance, my movement corresponding to the movements of the hands and thread within the drawing.