Paintings & Drawings2018produced

CHLORINE ON PAPER

Sixty works drawn in bleach on a dark ground

A large pale coil filling the sheet, like a rope or a whale doubled back on itself, with small drawn forms floating around it.

White dots scattered in a loose drift across deep blue, with a fine tangle of lines along the left edge.

A low box or plinth carrying small marks, with a dotted arc curving away beneath it.

A wide sheet with a lit panel and a beam running across, small drawn objects gathered underneath.

Pale cloud-like blooms and scattered points of light across deep blue.

A long horizontal band of fine wavy lines, a small square at one end and a circle at the other.

A pale wedge pointing down into the sheet, fine webbing spreading behind it.

A room drawn as an open cage of lines, its edges continuing past the sheet.

A wide dark sheet crossed by faint straight lines with one soft glow at the centre.

A blue sheet holding a moon, a standing figure and a run of stepped forms.

A tall sheet with a mast, a cross and a small structure low on the ground.

A long looping ribbon crossing black, with pale blocks set into it.

A wide sweeping curve on black, scattered dots and small drawn panels around it.

Bleach on dark blue and near-black paper. The mark is not put onto the sheet, it is taken out of it, so every line is the colour the ground used to be before it was lifted away. Warm gold where the bleach sat and ate through slowly, cold white where it moved fast.

A faint tangle of loops filling the whole sheet, barely lifted out of the dark.

Two tall panels of torn dark bands, a face at the top of one and another at the foot.

A wide sheet of gold and black torn bands, the bleach eaten through in ragged strips.

Pale blue and white, dense small leaf-like forms drifting across the sheet.

A burst of fine filaments beside a single ring, on a wide dark ground.

A wide sheet with columns of numerals along the bottom, small figures above and a green band.

A pale ladder of letters running across the sheet with a form hanging from it.

A tall blue sheet of framed panels and drawn instruments, like a wall of apparatus.

A wide dark sheet with a green pole, a bird-like form and a framed panel.

A drawn machine in a box with a spoon-shaped arm, in gold on dark blue.

A tall sheet of vertical lines with small forms hanging from them.

A wide blue sheet scattered with small forms, each trailing fine threads.

The range is wider here than anywhere else in the archive. Figures standing and seated, rooms and stairways drawn as if in wire, hands with their fingers splayed, insects, whole alphabets and columns of numerals, coiled forms several metres across made from joined panels. Some sheets hold one gesture and nothing else. Others are crowded to the edge.

Two dark panels of torn bands side by side, pale forms showing through the gaps.

A scribbled ring, an open hand and a horizontal bar, drawn in gold.

A standing figure with rays coming off it, steps leading away below, on deep blue.

A framed sheet crossed by two long lines, with soft warm blobs caught at their meeting.

A dotted line curving across a near-black sheet, ending in a small dense cluster.

Four insect forms scattered across near-black, each drawn in fine gold line.

A fine gold cage of overlapping lines, dense at the top and opening out below.

Loose pale loops running the width of a blue sheet, drawn in one unbroken movement.

A beaded line curving down across a dark sheet, each bead a separate small mark.

A gold loop and a beaded arc on near-black, with a block of small writing above.

Columns of handwritten numerals beside a beaded arc, on a dark ground.

They were all photographed across two days, 8 and 10 October 2018, in one sitting with the works laid out and lit. Ten of the drawings from that same shoot already have their own pages here, under the names CAUSTIC, VIS, ATINGERE, INTAMPINARE and the rest. These sixty are the ones that have never been shown, and none of them has a title yet.

A figure and a raised hand in fine gold line, with small framed panels around them.

Two hands with fingers splayed wide, drawn pale on near-black.

A figure holding a framed panel out in front of it, drawn in pale line on black.

A standing figure outlined in dots, small drawn panels floating around it.

A warm red and gold sheet with a boxed word and a figure worked into it.

A black sheet carrying one large white looping scrawl with letters caught inside it.

A wide dark sheet with a figure at the left, drawn framed panels beside it and dots scattered across the lower half.

A blue sheet holding a pale disc like a moon, a small standing figure and a drawn structure below it.

A pale burst opening like a starfish, soft blobs around it and one long curve running beneath.

Fine lines hanging down the sheet with a full alphabet written along the bottom edge.

A standing figure and a tall spire, both drawn in dots on a dark ground.

A beaded line curving across the dark, a small burst of light caught above it.

That is why they are together on one page rather than apart. As names come back to them they will move out into rooms of their own, which is exactly how the ten came to have theirs.

A long fine curve travelling the width of the sheet, a small drawn tag at its turn.

A gold loop over a beaded arc, with a block of small writing beside it.

A black sheet of paper hung from a rail in a daylit room, covered edge to edge with pale glyph-like marks. — Hung, rather than laid flat.

The same sheet seen wider, hanging free between a spotlight above and a yellow curtain behind it.

A dark sheet of pale strokes and flung droplets, a long diagonal running through them.

A dark sheet crowded with pale marks and spatter, denser towards the centre.

Close on one heavily worked surface: gold blooms opening through blue-black, fine scratched lines across them. — One surface, six times over.

The same surface further along, the gold running in a broad band with grey washes above and below.

The same surface again, a gold burst spreading out of a dark mass.

A tall view of the surface, the grain of the paper showing through the gold.

A wide view where the gold thins to ochre and the dark reads as scratched hatching.

The same surface upright, its blooms reading as figures more than as texture.

The last ten came from a second folder, opened later. Two are more of the same drawings; six are close views of one heavily worked surface where the bleach has gone gold rather than white; and two show a black sheet of paper hung from a rail in a daylit room, covered edge to edge in the same marks. That pair is the only picture in here of any of this hanging rather than lying flat.

Medium: Sodium hypochlorite (bleach) on paper
Materials: Sodium hypochlorite, Paper
Role: Artist