Abstract Drawing (Richard Deacon), The Drawing Room

Abstract Drawing is a unique artist-curated show put together by Turner Prize winner Richard Deacon, one of the most important and influential sculptors of his generation. The Drawing Room’s new show spans pieces by 30 artists across 105 years, including rare pieces by Jackson Pollock, Anish Kapoor, Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse and fellow Turner Prize winners Tomma Abts and Alison Wilding.

In 1987 Deacon became the fourth artist to win the Turner Prize, and this exhibition coincides with a major retrospective of his work to be held at Tate Britain. In Abstract Drawing, his stated aim was not to build a complete or even representative survey of a discipline so fundamental to his own work as a sculptor, “but in selecting a show around the idea of abstract drawing, these various strands – inscriptive, calligraphic, ornamental, generative, individuating and identifying – have all featured.”

That said, many of Deacon’s selections have a clear preoccupation with sharpness and clarity of form that can’t help but lead us back to Deacon’s own approach to working in metal and wood. Tomma Abts, Anni Albers and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian have all produced geometric drawings with repetitive patterns and a self-consciously constructed feel – chiming in with Deacon’s own view of his work as not modelled or carved but fundamentally ‘fabricated’.

Elsewhere, conceptual drawings by John Latham and Eva Hesse strike out in a different direction. Look out for one of Latham’s famous One Minute paintings – a series of 60 images produced by spraying blocks of board with a burst black paint for one second each. The end result: chance patterns created by the interaction between the media themselves, just as much as by the artist. Similarly, Jackson Pollock’s rare 1951 blot drawing focuses our attention on the physical reaction between ink and porous paper – which is ultimately responsible for producing the effect.

This is the fourth show in the Drawing Room’s artist-curated exhibition series, and is a wonderful insight into Deacon’s understanding of the relationship between artist and medium. It’s also a rare opportunity to see rarely exhibited, unjustifiably overlooked work by some of the biggest names in modern art. Don’t miss it.