Two New Exhibitions at PM Gallery |
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The Central Line - Drawing as Vital Practice and Petherbridge Alone with Soane
The Central Line, two new exhibitions exploring the importance and vitality of drawing, opens at the PM Gallery, Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing on 19 January 2007. Running until 3 March 2007, the exhibitions include a show devoted to the work of artist Deanna Petherbridge and a collection of work by ten artists, including new works being shown for the first time, for which Deanna Petherbridge is curator. Drawing as Vital Practice is a new exhibition which profiles the work of ten international artists working in drawing, painting and animation. The exhibition examines the large-scale production of a group for whom drawing is a way of life: as daily practice, as confessional space, as a means of interpreting the world and interacting with others. The Central Line artists include: Drawing as Vital Practice takes place in PM Gallery, the extension to Pitzhanger Manor and the largest exhibition space in West London, housing contemporary art exhibitions throughout the year. Also opening on 19 January, Petherbridge Alone with Soane is a collection of pen and wash drawings reflecting Deanna Petherbridge’s fascination with architectural forms. During extensive visits to India and many countries in the Muslim world, including the Maghreb, Iran and Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia, Petherbridge’s experiences of both grand monuments and village architecture have served to enrich an eclectic vocabulary of forms in individual drawings and series of works. Fittingly, Deanna Petherbridge’s architecturally-inspired work will hang in the rooms of the Grade I listed Georgian Pitzhanger Manor, the ‘dream home’ built by architect Sir John Soane as a place to exhibit his own collection of art and antiquities. Deanna Petherbridge’s exhibition is the result of her journeys around the world and is intended to complement and pay tribute to Soane’s architectural vision. Deanna Petherbridge said ‘Drawing is more important now than ever. Artists nowadays work in a huge range of disciplines from installation to video, but drawing gives artists the ability to express themselves in a very personal way. Most of the work in The Central Line aspires to the spontaneity, freshness and open-endedness of the direct and relatively unmediated practice of drawing. My own preoccupations are very close to those of Sir John Soane, whom I have always admired as an architect, thinker and visionary.’ Deanna Petherbridge is an artist whose practice, writing and teachings are centred on drawing. As Professor of Drawing at the Royal College of Art (1995-2001) and Arnolfini Professor of Drawing, University of the West of England, Bristol (2002-6) she has written, lectured and broadcast extensively about contemporary and historical drawing, most recently delivering a series of lectures at the National Gallery, London in association with Camberwell College of Art and the University of the Arts. Sir John Soane’s fine art collection included the eight paintings of Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, purchased in 1802 specifically for display at Pitzhanger Manor. Soane sold the House in 1810 and the collection originally displayed at Pitzhanger can now be found at the Sir John Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. January 9, 2007 |