Exhibition installation views:
Solo exhibition presenting a series of drawings that the artist has been working on for more than ten years. Jonathan Parsons is known for the diversity of his practice, which includes installation, sculpture, found objects, fabrication and land art. The core of his artistic activity, though, is drawing and painting in the studio. Whilst he was developing many other projects during the last decade – some of which were large-scale and public – he has also been slowly, quietly and steadily making these drawings, all of which are shown together here for the first time. Each of the Black Drawings is made using the same straightforward basic artists’ materials: graphite pencil on paper. However, Parsons’ application of these materials is far from ordinary. He uses a meticulous technique of non- gestural and highly refined drawing to depict gestural graffiti tags and markings that he has found on the streets and documented photographically. All of his source material has a liquid and dripping quality, which is faithfully and convincingly captured in the final drawings, although no liquids at all were used in their production. Because of this, the drawings have a paradoxical character. They appear to be free-flowing, painterly, gestural and liquid, but they have actually been painstakingly produced using an entirely dry medium that is typically associated with linear drawing methods. The drawings themselves appear to be abstract, as they depict abstract symbols and letterforms, but they can be more accurately described as instances of hyperrealism. The Black Drawings are Parsons’ private obsession and they constitute an incredibly time consuming and intense ‘side project’ that ultimately reveals itself to be at the very heart of his working philosophy as an artist.
For the gallery floor plan see: Exhibition layout.pdf
