Paper. for DRAW, Fine Art academics Kelly Chorpening, Johanna Love, Zoë Mendelson and Rupert Norfolk have produced a set of presentations that show diverse approaches to working with, and thinking through paper.

A live discussion between the artists will enable them to respond to each others’ work and open out the conversation for the audience to join.

There are four short films to watch in advance of the live event.

1. Paper in three chapters by Kelly Chorpening
2. Thoughts on paper by Johanna Love
3. TIME MACHINES by Rupert Norfolk
4. On paper by Zoë Mendelson

A live discussion between the artists will enable them to respond to each others’ work and open out the conversation for the audience to join.

A condition that unites our work is a resistance to commonplace notions of paper as a blank and neutral surface. Instead, it is appreciated as active material to be in dialogue with, where engagement goes beyond what can go on it, but also: in it, under it, behind it, through it, with it, against it, and so on. Paper will explore ways this shifting set of formal and material relationships carry meaning.

In their book Drawing Difference: Connections between Gender and Drawing, authors Marsha Meskimmon and Phil Sawdon, propose a theoretical framework that applies to our approaches, and helps move the conversation:

‘beyond binary thinking towards the simultaneity of object and process, exploring concepts of becoming, emergence and materialisation, emphasising the embodied and experiential and formation of subjectivity in connection with others – these preoccupations are central to …the critical explorations of…theories and practices within and beyond art.’

Recorded presentations by each artist will show ways in which:

• paper is unbounded, and the site of information’s malleability, fragmentation and contradiction, suggesting a more authentic version of reality.

• paper is the apparent origin of information and meaning, wherein inspiration is taken not from the world, but from the page.

• paper’s weight and materiality are exploited by shifting its presentation away from the verticality of the wall, to the horizontality of the floor, and into social space.

• paper is envisioned as an active material, and imaginary space, where light and marks appear. Here, the imagined, remembered and foreseen can co-exist.

• paper’s activation is often a form of dirtying or ruination, its bettering tied to the compromising of its cleanliness.