Event

Nicola Tyson and Adrian Searle in Conversation

Grazing sheep and sky object, 2015

Nicola TysonGrazing sheep and sky object, 2015Graphite on paper

Location

Gallery

​“There is always a figure, the ineluctable trace of the human presence. A figure drawn on a plain sheet of paper, or occupying a painted space lain out with cursory indications of floors, walls, horizons, earth, sky. It is day or night or some other artifical time.” – Adrian Searle

Drawing Room hosts an in conversation with Nicola Tyson and Adrian Searle, to launch Tyson's solo show, Beyond the Trace. In 2005, Searle authored 'Nicola Tyson' to accompany her solo show at Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin. Building on many years' friendship and conversation, the two will delve into Tyson's drawing practice, which Searle described in his book as akin to an 'intimate diary'.

“When I begin to draw, I have no idea what’s going to appear. I work swiftly, to stay just ahead of the cage of language, the linear mind and rational decision-making. I just let the forms grow themselves – self-organize – with me making necessary adjustements towards a kind of dynamic equilibrium within the constant information flow that is sentience…” – Tyson

“Who knows where you might wind up? These little figures she draws in her notebooks seem to generate themselves. A figure is a thing as much as it is a person… Little wonder her figures are often in some state of confusion, or in a whirlwind of a tornado of drawing.” – Searle

Nicola Tyson (b. 1960, London) has exhibited internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include:  A Tendency to Flock, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2017); The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis (2017); Living Dangerously, Cleveland Institute of Art; Petzel, New York, (2016).  Group exhibitions include Mutual Admiration Society, Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago (2017); The Marked Self: Self-Portraits between Annihilation and Masquerade, Neue Galerie Graz, Austria (2015); The Nakeds, Drawing Room, London (2014), toured to De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, Sussex, and The Cat Show, White Columns, New York (2013). Nicola Tyson’s work is in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Corcoran Gallery of Art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Tate Gallery, London.

Adrian Searle (b.Born in 1953) has been chief art critic for The Guardian since 1996. He has contributed to a number of books, and edited the writings of Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz (Juan Muñoz, Escritos,  La Central, Barcelona, 2009).  Searle has curated several  exhibitions in the UK, Europe and the USA, notably Unbound: Possibilities in Painting (Hayward Gallery, London 1994); a retrospective of Brazilian sculptor Lucia Nogueira (Serralves Museum, Porto, 2007) and Juliao Sarmento: Close Distance (La Case Encendida, Madrid, 2011) . Searle has also been a Turner Prize judge (2004) and a member of the jury for the Kurt Schwitters Prize in Hanover (2009-2013).  He lives in London.