Category Archives: abstraction

Mollie Rice, “Field Study, Parramatta Road” (2018)

drawings of abstract lines on the wall and curled up on a pedestal

“Mollie Rice explores human spatiality, and sensations of place, through an experimental drawing practice. Multiple visits to a particular site by the artist yield sound recordings, which are then translated into drawings in the studio, creating a complex connection between percpetion and place, action and experience. The works in this exhibition were created through a series of ten thousand step walks along Parramatta Road, starting from a place of significance to the artist and ending in a new location, which is then explored through processes of active listening and the physical record of drawing. ” (credit)

Margaret Seymour, Walking in the Colour Field: Local and Remote (2018)

“WALKING IN THE COLOUR FIELD: LOCAL AND REMOTE (2018)
ArticulateUpstairs, Articulate Project Space, Leichhardt, Sydney.

WALKING IN THE COLOUR FIELD is an interactive artwork that takes place both inside and beyond the gallery. By wearing a specially designed sensor armband, two ‘remote’ participants who are simply going about their daily lives determine the colours displayed on the largest screen. The smaller screen responds to changes inside the gallery. Its ‘local’ colours are affected by viewers passing in front of the adjacent painted panels. Placed in public view but communicating across multiple sites, WALKING IN THE COLOUR FIELD echoes the way that public and private spaces are increasingly entwined through mobile technologies.

WALKING IN THE COLOUR FIELD was presented in FOOTSTEPS IN THE CORRIDOR, the final exhibition in a series curated by Nadia Odlum on the theme of Navigation.” (credit)

Judy Marsh, Left Leaning (2017)

“Judy Marsh’s paintings use the visual language of the structures that shape our movement in the urban environment, particularly of hazard signs and barriers. In these sculptural paintings strips of black and white diagonal stripes protrude forwards with an arresting vibrancy. Left open at the side, the works invite the viewer to peer between the panels – filled with carefully executed scaffolding, these sections speak to the in-between spaces that emerge when two barriers are erected.” (credit)

Mike Dax, Salt Drawing (2022)

(credit)

SALT from Michael Dax Iacovone on Vimeo.

“Artist Statement:

I like to think of drawing as a broad term, not limited to pencil on paper.  Drawing is a record and a representation.  It can be a record of what something looks like, or it can represent a location, or an action.  It can be a record of an event, or an idea, but it isn’t mistaken for any of these things, it is not a substitute.  I draw by moving through spaces based on systems.  The artifacts of these journeys are records of those drawings.

I create systems to experience spaces through movement and labor.  I make art by creating maps, drawings, photos, and videos that utilize the virtual understandings of space to create systems and formulas to actually experience those spaces.    Ideally, the presentation of the formulas and systems along with the visual manifestation of the work will influence the viewers into considering and possibly experiencing their own spaces differently…. but that’s a lot to ask. Maybe someone just wants to look at it, and I’m good with that.” (credit)

Omar Mismar, The Path of Love Series

“For a period of 30 days, I took a walk every day, navigating the city using Grindr, a geo-location gay mobile app that tells the users the vicinity of gay men around them. Each day I picked a man I desired, and tried to get as close as possible to him using the app. I kept a record of my routes and traced them into paths.” (credit)

Lygia Pape, Divisor (Divider) (1968)

Lygia Pape, Divisor from Para Site on Vimeo.

Lygia Pape (1927-2004, Brazil)

“Lygia Pape was part of the generation of artists who founded the Neo–concrete movement in Brazil, an experimental moment of constructivism and geometric abstract art, which manifested in South America in the late 1950’s. Neoconcretist artists like Pape sought to explore ideas of colour and form in relation to the sensorial cartography of the individual and the collective.

The work Divisor was originally performed on the streets of Rio de Janeiro in 1968. It is composed of an immense white fabric, which can be seen as a large scale white monochrome and is activated by a participative audience. The only visible part of each participant is their head, piercing through the fabric, whilst their hidden bodies jointly move along public space. The amorphous mutant forms created throughout the piece reflect the subjectivity of the participants who struggle between individualism and solidarity with the collective experience.” (credit)

William Anastasi, Untitled (Pocket Drawings) (1969)

scribbly drawings

“Anastasi folded these sheets into eight squares, making them small enough to fit into his pocket. As he walked, he held a tiny, soft pencil against the exposed paper inside the cramped space of his pocket; the resulting marks graph his movements. When he deemed a section complete, Anastasi refolded the sheet, creating a new blank surface, and the process began again. “I love walking,” the artist has explained. “I find that walking does something to my thinking, to my mental process, that is different from sitting or lying down.” These “pocket drawings” are part of a broader practice that Anastasi has described as “unsighted,” including works made while walking (holding a pad, he looks at his destination as he draws) and riding the subway (the train’s stops and starts, bumps and turns, direct the line’s size, weight, and orientation). — Gallery label from A Trip from Here to There, March 15–July 30, 2013.

Medium Pencil on two sheets of transparentized paper
Dimensions each: 10 7/8 x 14″ (27.6 x 35.6 cm)” (credit)

Rebecca Gallo, One Walk Sculptures (2016)

“A series of found object assemblages, each comprising objects collected during a single walk departing from and returning to home. Exhibited in Written In Time curated by Catherine Benz at Delmar Gallery, Ashfield, January-February 2016.” [credit]

“On walking: in mid-2014, I adopted a dog and I started walking. We would walk for at least an hour a day, and she was quick to sniff out scraps of food: half-eaten kebabs, chicken bones, that sort of thing. So, I would scan the ground, trying to spot hazards before she did, and quickly I started to notice other things. Bright coils of wire from electrical repairs; stray nuts and washers; the translucent green of expired whipper snipper cords. Handwritten notes,
packaging moulds and small weights from the rims of car tyres nestled into the crooks of gutters.

Collecting and using found objects was already part of my artistic practice, but the act of walking changed and focused this. A walk came to be told through the haul of items I could hold in my hand or fit in my pockets. Human movement, traced and told through human discards.”

Walter de Maria, Mile Long Drawing (1968)

“For “Mile Long Drawing” (1968), the artist chalked two parallel lines 12 feet apart for the length of a mile in the Mojave Desert in California. This was one of his first land art pieces which saw him transport his minimalist ideas from the gallery to the outdoors. Obviously, the markings didn’t last long as they were drawn with chalk, and so the temporary nature of the work draws attention to the passing of time and the idea is that change is constant.” [credit]