Drawing Performance, Opening night of Quadrat Exhibition, 21 June, 2019

Quadrat, a joint exhibition with Michelle Vine, explores the relationship between a scientific and artistic way of seeing the world. As part of the opening of Quadrat exhibition at Logan Art Gallery I performed a 25 minute drawing where I traced a selection of videos of Michelle as she was sorting her insects. She had collected these insects in a malaise trap and needed to sort them out in order to quantify and identify them. In each of my drawings I focused on depicting different aspects of Michelle’s movement –where her hands had been and what they had been doing. Different camera angles allowed for a more complete picture of her actions, and in some drawings the left and right hand were differentiated using different coloured conte.

Most of the time I am drawing career scientists in lab coats and working in fume hoods. It was especially important to me to draw Michelle for this exhibition firstly, to demonstrate the way our art practices are linked, through our love of science and art. But it was also important to show how science is accessible to everyone and that like art, passion drives science and the new discoveries and revelations that follow.

Photo credit: Steve Mardon.