‘Drawing Room at 20’ Artists’ Reflections: Alice Maher & Richard Mark Rawlins

‘Drawing Room at 20’ Artists’ Reflections: Alice Maher & Richard Mark Rawlins

Online Talk Tue 15 Feb 2022

In 2022, Drawing Room celebrates its 20th birthday. To mark the anniversary we are looking back at momentous exhibitions from our recent and more distant past and talking to the artists and contributors who made them happen, examining the centrality of drawing to creative practice from the perspective of artists; in the first of this yearlong series we look back to the exhibition Drawn Out (2021).

This online in conversation features two of the artists from the show – Alice Maher and Richard Mark Rawlins. The discussion, led by Drawn Out co-curator Jacqui McIntosh, will look in depth at their exhibited works and the ways in which ostensibly modest practices – drawing, erasing, redrawing – can produce unimaginable beings and worlds that can surprise even their makers.   

This discussion was broadcast live on Zoom, Tuesday 15th February 2022.

About the speakers: 

Born 1956 County Tipperary, Alice Maher lives and works in Claremorris. Graduated from BA French and Political History, University of Limerick, Limerick (1978); Diploma in Fine Art, Crawford Municipal College of Art, Cork (1985); MA Fine Art, University of Belfast, Belfast (1986); and Postgraduate Painting, San Francisco Art Institute (1987). Alice Maher’s work touches on a wide range of subjects often reprising, challenging, and expanding mythic and vernacular narratives. Her artistic practice spans painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, animation, and video. The various art works and materials lend themselves to lateral, associative, or enigmatic display, aided by her very particular attention to setting and context. Animated films expand on a lifelong devotion to the practice of drawing. Her works are held in public and private collections including The Neuberger Museum, The Hammond Museum, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MOMA, the British Museum and the Georges Pompidou Centre Paris. 

Born Port of Spain 1967, Richard Mark Rawlins lives and works in Hastings. He graduated from Post Graduate Diploma, Print, at Royal College of Art (2019). Rawlins’ research takes a transnational approach to the “pop-cultural” poetics and politics of life in the Caribbean, the contested and resultant histories/realities of colonialism and its transpontine consequence, black identity and diaspora politics. His work is held in public and private collections including Wedge Curatorial Collection, Toronto; AMBA Collection, London; Soho House Art Collection, London; and the Art Collection of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, Port of Spain.