Drawn to the Real, Alan Cristea

Drawn to the Real (Alan Cristea Gallery) showcases five contemporary artists united by the medium of drawing: Miriam de Búrca, Jane Dixon, Richard Forster, Marie Harnett, and Emma Stibbons. 

The back-story…

Historically, drawings have been seen as the most intimate expression of an artist; something equivalent to entering an artist’s inner sanctum of creativity to gain a unique insight into their working process. This is art historically of course. In the current art market drawings are usually demoted to ‘works on paper’ – bearing a large price difference from “oil on canvas” – and as such, they are unfairly seen at the prêt-à-porter version of an artist’s work. Of course this shouldn’t be true. Drawn to the Real, at Alan Cristea Gallery, is a way to put drawing centre stage, not as a warm-up but the main event. 

A lot has changed over the course of history: “Old Master Drawings” were usually made with a brush and ink, but the invention of the pencil has changed the medium immeasurably. Harder to use in a flourishing manner, a pencil invites intricate detail, a precise record, most often in a graphic design context. After the dancing paint of Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism, drawing had become about being meticulous.

The exhibition…

So here are five artists that do just that and most are interested in documenting things. Miriam de Búrca details the wildlife and plants in the grounds of Crom Estate, Northern Ireland, as a comment on what time has done to Ireland through its famines, troubles and occupations. Richard Forster revisits the same seascape in North-East England to capture its shifts in time. Marie Harnett uses drawing to preserve emotionally-charged snapshots from movies, which now claim a new life of their own. Emma Stibbon is drawn to landscapes of great change, re-creating them using fragile materials like chalk on blackboard, or volcanic ash on paper. The slight odd-one-out is Jane Dixon, who uses the rubbings of real-life surfaces cut with forms she has invented, so to blur fact and fiction – one a copy of life, the other an invention realised in 3d.

But even in Dixon’s fresh take on frottage, drawing is seen as the most honest way of representing the world. The sincerity of drawing seems to be making it the medium of choice for an accurate, direct representation of the world. The camera really must lie to have lost so much trust! So it will be good to see work from contemporary artists who, like the Old Masters, invite you into their house to whisper to you with drawings.