CAST Gallery

Artists have traditionally utilised drawing for the directness and immediacy of its expression, and to make preliminary plans and designs of their work. In this exhibition, Felix Ratcliff explores how a number of contemporary artists from Ireland, Germany and New Zealand, along with Australian and Tasmanian artists, use drawing as a vehicle that transports ideas, expressions and emotions through space and time; between the artist and their work; between the work and the viewer; and, ultimately, between the artist and their audience.

In Vehicle, drawing is presented as a dynamic form of mapping, tracing and traversing space. But Ratcliff also asserts that the artists in this exhibition use drawing as a means of creating prototypes or future-oriented models of what this mapping of space might look like. In other words, these drawings both express the artists’ process of experiencing and knowing space, and also shape and alter that space by marking the artists’ movement through it.

Vehicle’s exploration of what drawing means in contemporary art demands its viewers to rethink the definition of drawing. While experienced art audiences are familiar with the idea that drawing can be an action as much as an object, the ‘general public’ may be quite surprised to discover that even one of Art’s most accessible and comprehendible practices can turn out to be something other than it seems.