STUDIO RESEARCH ISSUE #4 NOVEMBER 2016 Cover: Hannah Quinlivan State of Suspension 2015, steel, PVC, nylon, salt and shadow, variable dimensions. Courtesy of .M Contemporary. CONTENTS Editorial 2 William Platz Some Thoughts on the Social Co-Option of Drawing 4 Deanna Petherbridge Performance Drawing: Framing the Elements 18 Kellie O'Dempsey Drawing the Immaterial Object of Dance 28 Rochelle Haley Highlights From Drawing International Brisbane 40 (DIB) Symposium, 30 September–2 October 2015 Graphesis: Instrument and Li(n)e 50 Carolyn Mckenzie-Craig Drawing, Ego, Self: The Practice of Rasa Rekha in the 62 Work of Indian Contemporary Artist Piyali Ghosh Piyali Ghosh (with Marnie Dean) Electric Drama: Residual and Emergent Modernism 74 in William Dobell’s Television Drawings Chris McAuliffe Cinematic Drawing: What Might That Be? 82 Dena Ashbolt 94 Editorial Board 94 Contributors’ Notes 96 Acknowledgements EDITORIAL This issue of Studio Research has emerged Although function and malfunction cannot be from papers and drawings presented at the directly apprehended, behaviours act as indicators inaugural Drawing International Brisbane (DIB) and, in doing so, signal alternative productive Symposium, held at Griffith University (GU) in possibilities. I am inclined to use the modal terms 2015. An initiative of Drawing International Griffith ought and oughtn’t in relation to function and (DIG) and the Griffith Centre for Creative Arts malfunction, but it is beyond the scope of this Research, the Symposium brought together over short essay to delve too deeply into the intricacies one hundred international drawing researchers. of modals. Suffice it to say that a perception of a DIG is an ongoing program aimed at recognising behaviour that oughtn’t be happening is indicative and advancing the quality of drawing research of a malfunction, and the presumption of oughtn’t in Australia and abroad. As I write this editorial, demands a theoretical structure in which things I am sitting in a studio in Chiyoda, Tokyo, with are occurring as they ought. In regards to modal twenty-two students and professors from GU, statements and malfunction, philosopher Paul Tokyo University of the Arts, and Joshibi University Bloomfield writes: of Art and Design. What brings us together is DIGTokyo2016—a workshop, seminar and When something is functioning as it ought, exhibition program curated by Pat Hoffie (GU) then the possible world where it is properly 2 and Linda Dennis (Touch Base Creative Network). functioning is the actual world . It may William Platz EDITORIAL DIGTokyo2016 builds upon the drawing research not be working in this way, however; it may initiated in 2015 and points forward to the actually be malfunctioning, and in this case upcoming DIB2017. the function of the item can be understood in Among the artefacts and artworks in the nearby terms of what it is doing in another possible Mori Art Museum’s current exhibition, The world in which it is actually functioning Universe and Art: Princess Kaguya, Leonardo da properly. (2001, 144) Vinci, teamLab, hangs Galileo Galilei’s famous little page of watercolour moons (1609). The Subverting, extending, or even disqualifying sketches exemplify two of drawing’s critical conservative ought/proper/actual axes would behaviours—expeditiousness and observation. In seem to be cardinal motivations in contemporary preparation for DIB2015, and in the twelve months practice—i.e., marginalising the properly since, I have been preoccupied with notions of functioning actual world in favour of alternative drawing’s behaviours—its modals, functions, and possibilities and worlds. Why so often, then, do malfunctions. From Deanna Petherbridge’s opening such methods yield shoddy drawings, typically salvo at the Symposium to the final plenary (a through cavalier interpenetrations of drawing, somewhat raucous exchange of ideas about how performance and the performing arts? Perhaps and what drawing ought to…), it became quite clear such drawings do not really signal structural that the researchers and students in attendance malfunctions or pose alternative possibilities, but were more interested in contesting drawing’s rather signal mis-functions: poor perceptions of behaviours than its boundaries. Certainly, the the significance of performance and the judgment little Galileo behaves as it ought, with immediacy, of drawing. A productive malfunction would accuracy, and vitality. Within this framework, it is only be possible in an environment in which the instructive to deploy a thought experiment in which hybridisations are disturbing each form through the vitality of drawing informs an organic response structural revision. Philosopher Beth Preston to its behaviours. describes malfunction as a disruption of the underlying structure that defines the function, tendencies to ‘cheat’ or ‘rig’ her own systems. not of the function itself (Preston 2013, 138). Piyali Ghosh (with Marnie Dean) also describes It is tempting to adopt a reductive laissez-faire a productive theory of performance and drawing ethos in the discipline of drawing that denies an through the concept of the rasa rekha—the ‘actual-proper’ structure’s relevance and merit. material mark informed by the immaterial force of This absence exempts drawing from the difficult presence and place. Veering from knee-deep-in- dictates of the way a theoretical drawing ought the-Arabian-Sea performance to the Mahabharata to behave, and to account for its malfunctions and German Expressionism, Ghosh argues for a when it behaves as it oughtn’t. To counter such a universal synthesis of new rasas. generic (and meaningless) tendency, behaviours Turning from performance to the televisual are instigated and described here as antidotes and cinematic, Chris McAuliffe’s essay on William to reductive modalities and anti-judgements— Dobell’s television drawings is an important gateways to possible worlds—that maintain the contribution to the understanding of Dobell’s integrity and alacrity of drawing. transitional works of the 1960s. McAuliffe Petherbridge’s provocative keynote address conjures the solitary Dobell informed by on the problematic hybridisations of drawing/ Baudelairean concepts of modernity, although social art and drawing/performance outlines a Huysmans’s enigmatic and hermitic decadent Des formidable critique of drawing practices that Esseintes also circulates in Dobell’s idiosyncratic perhaps too casually espouse characteristics such methods (ballpoint) and melancholic observations as collaboration, immersion, and performativity. of whatever-happens-to-be-on. In her paper, Her text provides an important point of reference Dena Ashbolt discusses her practice, which is for any studio practitioner working in the arenas based on French artist Henri Michaux’s concept of of ‘performance drawing’ or ‘collaborative ‘cinematic drawing’. Just as Dobell’s sketches often drawing’. One such artist is Kellie O’Dempsey, became unfocused linear ramblings of the spaces whose essay on the necessities of co-presence in in-between the spectacular televisual images, so 3 the live drawing encounter shifts the emphasis of Ashbolt describes the ‘almost’ in the cinematic— drawing almost entirely to the phenomenon of the absent narratives, flickering stills, and ‘witness’. Literature on ‘performance drawing’ is temporal blurs that properly define the experience vague and emergent—although Performance Art of drawing and its inextricable association with Journal dedicated an entire issue to the topic in presence and knowledge. STUDIO RESEARCH 2014. It is notable that DIB2015 featured fifteen This collection of essays from DIB2015 may papers and three exhibitions that explicitly emphasise a handful of contemporary drawing Issue #4 November 2016 engaged with the uneasy alliance of performance themes and concerns (performance, the screen, and drawing. Rochelle Haley’s essay contends social practice), but it also evidences the potency with dance and drawing through a shrewd of drawing research, the deep entanglement of mechanism in which she deploys drawing as studio practice and knowledge production, and both the container for performance (invoking the willingness of each researcher to open up the inscribed cube) and as an element within possible worlds without disqualifying alternative the performance. Taking choreographer Trisha productions. Finally, at the centre of this issue Brown’s 1975 work Locus as its foundation, Haley’s is a gallery of drawings exhibited during the argument is that drawing can simultaneously symposium, which speak for themselves. provide the immaterial structure for performance and function as its documentation. William Platz Carolyn Mckenzie-Craig contributes another Guest Editor important argument in this dialogue. Dealing explicitly with kinesthetics, performativity, indexicality, and posture, Mckenzie-Craig’s essay deftly entangles behaviour and drawing. She REFERENCES actively intensifies the malfunctions of drawing, Bloomfield, Paul. 2001. Moral Reality. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Preston, Beth. 2013. A Philosophy of Material Culture: Action, Function, and Mind. gesture, and language, even acknowledging her New York: Routledge. SOME THOUGHTS ON THE SOCIAL CO-OPTION OF DRAWING Deanna Petherbridge I was fully aware while preparing this keynote in art schools, and, of course, from reading and address that my views might be considered research. I was appointed Professor of Drawing challenging. Therefore, when I learned that at the postgraduate Royal College