Week 3

Ignite Bristol

A brief talk on drawing at Tobacco Factory Theatre, Bristol:

Tacit knowledge

Books / Enjoying reading Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman and his ideas on repetition and practice as integral to the development of skill. In his book, divided into interestingly titled chapters like Hand virtues - At the Fingertip: Truthfulness and Ability: Localize, Question, Open Up, Sennett brilliantly charts the development of specific themes relating to 'the craftsman' and 'the workshop' throughout history, highlighting the value of craft as a way of enriching our lives and changing the way we anchor ourselves in the world around us. 

'You start by sketching, then you do a drawing, then you make a model, and then you go to reality - you go to the site - and then you go back to drawing. You build up a kind of circularity between drawing and making and then back again. You think and you do at the same time. You draw and you make. Drawing . . . is revisited. You do it, you dedo it, and you redo it again.' [Renzo Piano]

'What do you do really?'

Symposium Construction: Knowing Through Making, Mall Galleries, London.

26th June 2012 (London Festival of Architecture)

Notes: Introduction /Patricia Cain

Notes: Alsop and McLean /Jeanette Barnes

Notes: Richard Wentworth

Notes: Jeanette Barnes

Notes: Ranulph Glanville

Notes: Tony Eyton RA

Bigger Drawings

I am very pleased to be giving a brief talk on drawing at Ignite Bristol on Friday 1^st June. 

The focus will be a series of recent drawings completed while on location at the Royal Academy, London, during the exhibition DAVID HOCKNEY: A BIGGER PICTURE (see above). It will be a chance to hear about the working processes as well as ideas and themes around the work (drawing as reportage, drawing vs photography, the palimpsest, etc). Tickets available here. 

La Chiesa non si tocca.

Tobias Jones and Richard Lloyd Parry in conversation with philosophy writer Julian Baggini.

Foyles Bookshop, Bristol

In the summer of 2000, Lucie Blackman stepped out into the vastness of Tokyo and disappeared forever. The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave. Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, has followed the case since Lucie’s disappearance, delving into the mind and background of the man accused of the crime – Joji Obara, described by the judge as ‘unprecedented and extremely evil – and wrote about it in People Who Eat Darkness: Love, Grief and a Journey Into Japan’s Shadows.

Writer on Italy and crime novelist Tobias Jones’s new book is Blood on the Altar, the true-life story of an Italian murderer, Restivo, protected by his family, as well as a doctor with links to organised crime, and a priest who had vices of his own. Restivo’s first crime took over eight years to solve.

This event was part of The Festival of Ideas. For more upcoming events click here.

What is there to be looked at?

Artist Suzanne Mooney in conversation Dr Mick Wilson, artist, writer and Dean of the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, Dublin, Ireland. Wilson has recently published a text ('Splayed: Six Verses Dreaming Gaps in Great Shining Things') inspired by Mooney’s exhibition currently on show at Spike Island, The Edge of Collapse.

Drawing Club goes to Cafe Kino

Into the Silence

Another brilliant talk from the FESTIVAL OF IDEAS Autumn Season at the Watershed, Bristol. Tonight Wade Davis spoke about his new book Into the Silence, the result of a long period of research into George Mallory, the man who disappeared not far from Everest’s peak in 1924. Mallory’s effort to reach Everest’s peak began as a grand imperial gesture and ended as a mission of regeneration for a country and a people bled white by the First World War.

“The First World War, the worst calamity humanity has ever inflicted on itself, still reverberates in our lives. In its immediate aftermath, a few young men who had fought in it went looking for a healing challenge, and found it far from the Western Front. In recreating their astonishing adventure, Wade Davis has given us an elegant meditation on the courage to carry on.”

—George F. Will

In pictures: the riots.

Reading about the riots in the newspaper.