Drawing Reading Group: Last session

Last Tuesday, we had our last DRG session. Even though TC had presented a very stimulating text (focusing on John Virtue’s exhibition at the National Gallery), the meeting got hijacked by an issue that was worrying the students. What would happen when I left? To my absolute pride, students felt that the group, thanks to the action research project, had really taken off. They considered me an active part of it and they felt that my move to Glasgow threatened the group.

I also feel very strongly about the group and had already started negotiations to Glasgow to keep a level of activity in 2 areas of my work at Wimbledon: my MA student supervision (which finishes early September) and the DRG. When I communicate this to the students, they felt very positive and threw ideas on how would it be possible to make it work cross-institutionally.

One of the first things they wanted to do was to distance themselves from a Reading Group constitution. They felt the Group would have more weight if independent. For that, we obviously needed a name. There was an immediate sparkle when JG mentioned Radical Drawing Research and we unanimously decided to accept it. Our motto: “not what drawing is but what drawing can do” seem to give us various ideas about how to proceed:

- Setting up a summer task to jointly write a mission statement

- Start creating a database of research journals and resources pertinent to the group

- Raise the group’s profile by:
→ Attending the TATE archive induction as a group in order to facilitate the curation of a drawing show in 2006, coinciding with the Drawing Symposium
→ Looking for galleries interested in showing drawing research (not practice)
→ Write a joint paper, perhaps expanding on the mission statement (perhaps to be submitted to TRACEY

- Create a website for the RDR

- Communicate amongst us via email and weblog

We set up a potential meeting for the 9 September to discuss the mission statement. However, as JG and other students live North of the country, there’s also the possibility of inviting them to Scotland, making some trips easier for me to attend.

I think we all felt wonderfully invigorated after this last meeting and we hope we have the energy and the time to dedicate to this project. I will be working at Glasgow only 3 days a week and, as they expect me to raise my research profile for rae2008, this is a good point to start from. Glasgow also has an international drawing research profile and the students felt very positive about possible cross-institutional collaboration and the possibility of applying for project seed funding.

A few days after, I went to Venice for the press days. The best thing about this type of events is their networking possibility. At least two galleries (one in Whitley, one in Ireland) seemed interested in the Radical Drawing Research group. This is something the group is interested in following up…