The Naturalness of Strange Things

The Naturalness of Strange Things considered the 'microstructure' of Henri Michaux's drawing 'Alphabet' (1927). Michaux's symbols were redrawn, digitally deconstructed into their constituent strokes, cut from adhesive vinyl, 'weeded' to remove the waste vinyl, then given to Ana Cavic; (an artist/poet and one half of Ladies of the Press*) to reconfigure as text. An exhibition at Five Years, London juxtaposed Cavic's five vinyl 'sculpture poems' alongside five meticulous graphite drawings of the vinyl remnants that might be seen as 'shadows' of the lines. In the same spirit of intervention (and risk) that prompted this body of work, I invited amaCollective (a curatorial group) to curate two further interventions at different points during the exhibition. The resulting final phase of the exhibition incorporated work by artists Tamarin Norwood and Louise Stern.

In June 2015 two drawings and two poems from the body of work were included in Drawing Paper #8, published by Jon Barraclough and Mike Carney. This issue was edited with Amanda Ravetz, Kate Genever and Anne Douglas.

In November 2015: The Naturalness of Strange Things was installed at Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster for two weeks, initially to accompany the one day symposium On Writing and Drawing: Theorizing and Practicing Creativity with Roland Barthes.

One drawing of the vinyl remnants has also been published in Manchester Making Matters, published by MMU with Foreword by Geoffrey Crossick Chair of the Crafts Council.

Drawing and Other Writing (ISBN 978-0-9933728-0-3) was published by Everyday Press in May 2016.

The Naturalness of Strange Things