Output details

Behind the eyes : making pictures

This curatorial project, which comprises of an exhibition, symposium and book, was funded by Arts Council England and held at Gallery North, Newcastle. The project investigates pictorial construction and painting’s temporality, exploring the complex distinction between an immediate image and a picture - a constructed pictorial address. It analyses the possibilities of re-making, or re-seeing recorded images that painting and drawing open up, through a series of linked public events.

In an innovative exhibition format, documentation and textual analyses of process were presented along with completed works, and this format has been extended to the book. The project thus seeks to articulate something of the usually tacit aspects of artistic process in the dialogue between image source and picture making, opening up different approaches to practice-based research to enhance understanding of creative decision-making. The book presents a collection of new works and writings by the twelve artists, whose strategies of making contribute to an in-depth discussion of contemporary pictorial practice. This is situated within the context of historical and current debates around the evolving form of the picture, from Charles Baudelaire’s 19th Century notion of ‘painting as world’, to Jean-François Chevrier’s recent discussions of composition and tableau.

Harland curated the project, exhibiting Cut Scatter, a series of six paintings, along with works by four other artists, and chaired the symposium, which included an artist panel discussion and papers by seven postgraduate researchers from Winchester School of Art; University of the Arts, London and Northumbria University. The symposium was recorded for online access. The book presented works, source material and reflective texts by the exhibiting artists and papers by the symposium speakers. It was edited and with a preface and introductory essay by Harland and launched at an event at Chelsea College of Art, London in July 2013.