Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Bath Spa University
Performative drawing in dynamic contexts, including the National Portrait Gallery, London; Blenheim Palace, London; The Old Vic, London and venues
Drawing is an inherently private experience, whereby the final outcome (in published or exhibited form) reveals little of the tentative and unique act of seeing. Vyner seeks to challenge this through a series of live drawing performances in public. Traditionally illustration often represents a closed system, whereby the iterated process is withheld from the public gaze, and only the final outcome is considered sufficient for publication. Vyner's previous reportage experience informed a wilfully different approach in which certainty gives way to spontaneity, and the risk of misrepresentation becomes a performance in itself. Vyner's research into drawing, places him in live situations where pressure of time and/or situation determines an outcome that strives to capture experience phenomenologically, drawing and editing simultaneously.
Zeegan (Varoom! August 2013) proposes that the traditionally stable, closed system of static illustration will need to be replaced by more dynamic and performative approaches, such as those exemplified in Vyner's practice.
Throughout 2012, Vyner undertook a year of live drawing performances of diverse events and venues, including Bath Half-Marathon (March), Virgin London Marathon (April), Blenheim Palace Triathlon (June), Assembly Rooms, Bath (November), National Portrait Gallery (November) and the London's Old Vic (December). In most cases, iPad drawings in real time were projected to audiences, in both intimate and public spaces. Further exposure for the Triathlon work was provided by a television interview (Channel 4's '4Triathlon', June 2012).
The outcomes of this work were published at the following links:
http://www.varoom-mag.com/?p=4405
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2012/dec/10/old-vic-celebrity-musicals#/?picture=400806204&index=8
http://www.varoom-mag.com/?p=937
http://www.illuminatebath.org/tag/tim-vyner/
