Monday, January 19, 2015

The Virtual Archive: Tricia Gillman

From Absorb to Zoom: An Alphabet of Actions in the Women's Art Library, my site-specific installation of digital prints with content derived from the Women's Art Library, will be on view at Goldsmiths College from 2 - 30 March, 2015.


In  tandem with the project, I am inviting selected artists with documentation in the WAL archive to send me images of recent work to feature on this project blog. 


In her earlier acrylic paintings Tricia Gillman layers decorative motifs, natural forms and geometrical marks. Here she describes her recent drawings, made on found materials. Moment was selected for the 2014 Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibition.


Moment, made on a piece of torn cardboard box, is a material layering of fragments of thoughts, partial words, "now" marks, which evolve into a physical presence over time.  




Moment, 40 x 43 cms, 2014, Drawing materials on torn cardboard box



Connect, 30 x 20 cms, 2014, Drawing materials on found cardboard



These drawings mark a sea-change for me. After 30-odd years of engrossment with the challenges, delights and skills of "picture-making", my priorities shifted towards a desire to register unadorned, primary experiences of time, of just being there. I felt the need to jettison all references outside the mark itself; the touch, the movement, the pulse, the indexical evidence of behaviour as a mirror or a paradigm for being. 


Day by Day 13 x 15 cms, 2014, Pencil on sketchbook back


Today, 24 x 20 cms, 2014, Drawing materials on Newsprint



The different series of drawings explore ways of making "a diary", something that records (time, movement, sensation, thought) but does not set out to evoke or refer, except as a by-product of materials and processes. The desire is to accrue a surface which can absorb, retain and breathe evidence of an investment in being, awareness and value of time past and future, held within time present.



Each Day, 25 x 24 cms. 2014, Drawing materials on found cardboard



Tricia Gillman:                   http://www.triciagillman.co.uk


Women's Art Library:       http://www.gold.ac.uk/make/




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