DRAWING NOW

Despard Gallery is proud to present DRAWING NOW, an exhibition of contemporary approaches to drawing.

DRAWING NOW features the work of eight contemporary artists whose creative practice centers around drawing. Electronic media is vastly becoming a dominating force in contemporary art, however the creative process always starts with pen and paper. DRAWING NOW brings together a diverse group of artists that represent what is happening in contemporary drawing.

Exhibiting artists Mary Scott and Lindsay Broughton have spent a large portion of their careers as educators, specialising in drawing. Broughton was the head of Drawing at the Tasmanian College of the Arts a position he held for 20 years. Upon his retirement, exhibiting artist Mary Scott took on the role. Scott works across both painting and drawing and is a well-established artist both within Tasmania and nationally. Other Tasmanian artists included in DRAWING NOW are Todd Jenkins, Graham Lang, Tor Maclean and Laura McMahon.

Bertie Blackman, well-known singer and songwriter will be exhibiting a selection of her drawings. The daughter of renowned Australian painter Charles Blackman, Bertie Blackman is a popular and critically acclaimed musician and a keen drawer. Her drawings are inspired by and interconnected with her life in the Australian music scene.

For the first time, Despard Gallery will also be exhibiting the work of Sydney based artist Jonathan McBurnie in DRAWING NOW. McBurnie creates strange and complex imagery drawn from seemingly unrecognizable texts: the coronation, and subsequent celebrity status, of Queen Elizabeth II and the politically-subversive thrash-metal band, Slayer. McBurnie’s series is made up of suspended narratives that are densely populated by numerous pop culture and art history symbols.