IN AND EASE

Curated colloquium with artists, Alastair MacLennan, Sandra Johnston, Roddy Hunter, and Tania Kovats exploring the idea of ‘interbeing’ between drawing and event. Informed by MacLennan’s interest in Zen and taking the blank page as a metaphor for infinity out of which everything manifests, and into which all recedes on as a continuous flow, participants collectively experimented with ‘drawing breath’ and discussed the relationship between drawing and performance, artwork and documentation and the possibilities of co-production at times of physical isolation. The event centred around a drawing workshop with Alastair MacLennan, and also included the premiere of a new video/sound performance work by Roddy Hunter and presentations by Tania Kovats and Sandra Johnston. The colloquium accompanied the online exhibition LIM(I)NAL which presented MacLennan's drawing-as-performance works alongside drawings submitted by others in response to the artist's scores. IN AND EASE was hosted by the Cooper Gallery as an associate programme to the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020. The event and the exhibition was analysed - together with MacLennan's wider performance practice - in 'Presence at a Distance. Alastair MacLennan and Performing Drawing during Lockdown', a peer-reviewed book chapter published by Bodor in a 2021 Routledge collection which gathers leading UK and international artists, academics, and practitioners the fields of contemporary performance, dance, and live art to offer creative-critical responses to the impact of COVID-19 on their work.