Preview: Space to Draw, Jerwood Space, London
Not-so-random patterns from Mother Nature
Tuesday 08 January 2008
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Peter Randall-Page's two-tonne carved granite sculpture, Skin Deep, and the preparatory sketches that accompany it in a new Jerwood Space exhibition, were inspired by nature.
"The actual pattern or system that is used in the drawings and the sculpture relate to a phenomena in chemistry where two chemicals won't mix, and they create these extraordinary patterns. It is an example of spontaneous symmetry-breaking that plants and animals use, often to create camouflage patterns. In recent years, I've become much more interested in understanding the underlying principles that form the incredible patterns and forms in nature."
Are his drawings the poor relation of sculpture? "Some of my drawings are ways of remembering things for my sculptures others, like these drawings, are works in their own right," he says.
The boulder used for Skin Deep comes from Finland. "An eroded boulder like this is a completely chaotic, random form and then I improvise with this linear pattern or system that you see in the drawings and in the sculpture." Randall-Page has made about 30 sculptures this way.
Other works in the exhibition include Antony Gormley's Feeling Material V, which uses wire to draw a figure within a three-dimensional space. Shown alongside is his series of Clearing drawings, which relate to sculptures that also used raw-metal rods to create 3-D drawings in space.
Heather Deedman will be showing paper cut-outs of intricate drawings of ceramics alongside 60 ceramic objects. Alison Gill, meanwhile, will show intricate line drawings that have informed her two sculptures Trophy (a surreal, huge paper sculpture on a stick with two eyes poking out) and Sleepers Nightmare Witches (two metallised resin giant chrysalises painted silver, with a sound of a pumping heartbeat).
Paul McDevitt, who is known for his cartoon-like drawings, has made two wicker sculptures called Slumper and Lounger, inspired by Henry Moore.
17 January to 10 February (020-7654 0171)
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- 3 Morbidly obese two-year-old from Saudi Arabia youngest person to have gastric bypass surgery
- 4 Nuclear scare at Navy submarine base after 'unbelievable' failures
- 5 The Sun newspaper's '1,200 killed by mental patients' headline labelled 'irresponsible and wrong'
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