CORE contemporary art

Much 2do About Drawing looks at this strand of thought through a very specific lens: drawing, and its impact on wider art production. Much like the act of writing, drawing is a root form of communication. When studying fine art, classes to learn drawing form, be it still life or the figure, is a universal fundamental. This is not only for a strenuous training in observational skill, but to encourage the development of the artist’s own visual style, as well as important basics including composition, spatial awareness and mark making. Therefore we may understand that it is often the serious study of and achievement in life drawing (which here I use as a term to encompass both figures and objects drawn from live observation) that leads to stronger skills in other non-figurative or imaginative areas. The works on display are not the drawings our imaginations typically conjure up, of pencil on paper, with a sketchy quality. Nor are they studies that prelude other works such as sculpture or installation. What we are offered instead are fully formed artworks that inform what the radical and creative potential of drawn marks and lines might be. What we are offered is a portal to the aesthetic possibilities gleaned from the basis of drawing.

In bringing together a mix of ten artists who today sit at the vanguard of Malaysian contemporary art history, Much 2do About Drawing does shed a light on the local state of art production currently. Overlaps in styles occur strongly, especially within the confines of the Mixed Media production, yet the exhibition as a whole is as distinct and diverse as the artists featured. A non-exhaustive list that spans artists who established themselves between the 1980’s to 2010’s, the strongest tie that emerges is the value that each of these artists has placed on the formal aspects of making art.