David Connearn, Drawnonward. October — November, 2001.
Drawnonward, 2001. Three drawings, each drawing: Untitled, 120x120cm, ink on paper.
David Connearn's work is rooted in a reductive drawing approach in which he starts by drawing a freehand horizontal line. Below that he draws a second line, trying to exactly match the first line. He then repeats this process to a determined size. The resultant works have a variety of visual echos: rock strata, aerial views of the ocean or the close weave of cloth. Yet the work is resolutely “about” nothing; it does not seek to represent anything but its own making. The fastidious line making is a material artifact of the time, conditions, and temperament which brought it into being. The three drawings exhibited at IFF were each made with slightly different parameters: one was drawn from left-to-right, one from right-to-left and the third was drawn alternately left-to-right then right-to-left.
David Connearn lives in London he has exhibited since the late 1970s in venues such as: Hayward Gallery, London; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; Rooseum, Malmo; and Wigmore Fine Arts, London. In 2000 he was appointed John Florent Stone Fellow at Edinburgh College of Art and in the same year was awarded the major prize in the Cheltenham Open Drawing Exhibition (subsequently known as Jerwood Drawing Prize). In 1999 Connearn was an artist in Resident Artist at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
