This catalogue is published to coincide with Nowhere is here, curated by The Drawing Room. The international group exhibition taps into the capacity of drawing to capture the contingent quality of the natural environment and our complex relationship with it. Four of the artists have gravitated to London from different parts of the world and all are establishing international profiles. Each artist brings a different relationship to the natural environment, be it imagined, experienced or remembered, emotional or dispassionate. The artists use drawing to create hybrid worlds that could suggest a repositioning of our relationship to nature and society.
Edited by Kate Macfarlane, Co-Director, Drawing Room, London. Essays by Becky Beasley (an artist based in Berlin) and Kate Macfarlane (curator and Co-Director of Drawing Room).
Available through Drawing Room.
Axel Antas (b. 1976 Helsinki, Finland) is a London based artist. He studied at The Nordic School of Art, Kokkola, Finland and graduated from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2000. Selected solo exhibitions include: Long Player, Sinne, Helsinki, Finland (2015); Natural High Frequency, Galleria Heino, Finland (2014); New to nature, Rokeby gallery, London (2011); Geometry of Place, Hippolyte Galleria, Helsinki (2010); Structures for the Unseen, Spacex, Exter (2008); Axel Antas, Heino Gallery, Helsinki (2008); Axel Antas, Rokeby Gallery, London (2008); and Invention of Solitude, HIAP project room, Helsinki, Finland (2007). Selected group exhibitions include: Drawing Biennial 2015, Drawing Room, London (2015); The 7th Wave – Wihuri and Visual Art, Rovaniemi Art Museum, Finland (2013); Force of Nature: Picturing Ruskin’s Landscape, Millennium Gallery, Museums Sheffield, UK (2013); Drawing Biennial 2013, Drawing Room, London (2013); Malin Alhsved / Axel Antas, Elverket, Ekenäs, Finland (2013); Dark Hours | Fixed Space, & Abet, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, UK (2012); Unseen Art Fair, Amsterdam (2012); Reflective Shadow, Ordrupgaard Muesum, Copehangen, Denmark (2011); In Arcadia, IMT Gallery, London (2011); Drawing Biennial 2011, Drawing Room, London (2011); (Un)Balance, Z33, Hasselt, The Netherlands (2010); Synligt – Osynligt, Rackstad museet, Arvika, Sweden (2010); and Dwelling here (screening), Stavanger, Pubic screens, Norway (2010).
Nogah Engler (b. 1970, Israel) currently lives and works in London. Since graduating from the MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2003, she has exhibited widely. Recent solo exhibitions include Circles of Time, Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel (2012), Tracing Echoes, Noga Gallery, Tel-Aviv (2009), Endless Night and Day, Ritter/Zamet Gallery, London (2007), Laced Earth, Julie M, Gallery, Tel-Aviv (2003). Selected group exhibitions include The Armory Show, New York (2011), The Beholder’s Share, Mummery + Schnelle Gallery, London (2010), Windows, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2010), PaperView, John Jones, London (2009), Obsession: Contemporary art from the Lodeveans Collection, University of Leeds Gallery (2009), Nowhere is Here, Drawing Room, London (2008).
Reece Jones ( b. 1976, Botswana) lives and works in London and studied at the Royal Academy Schools. Jones explores notions of truth, representation and actuality by composing invented drawings which follow particular processes of erasure and re-definition. His sources and references include cinema, land art, the American Sublime and ‘evidence’ of wild mythical beasts. He is a lecturer in Fine Art - Painting at City & Guilds of London and recently curated The Hair of the Dog at Block 336, Brixton and Terminalia at Charlie Smith London. Jones was also one of the founding members of Rockwell, a project space in Hackney from 2002-2007. Selected solo exhibitions include: Control Test, All Visual Arts, London (2012); Control Test, Triumph Gallery, Moscow (2011); Fatal Attempts at Re-Entry, Simon Dickinson, London (2008); Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst and Joe La Placa, London (2006); Andrew Mummery Gallery, London (2005); and Protect and Survive, Rockwell, London (2004). Selected group exhibitions include: The Future Can Wait & Saatchi’s New Sensations, London (2014); Cultus Deorum, Saatchi Gallery, London (2014); Terminalia, Charlie Smith, London (2014); Unstable Ground, Paper, Manchester (2014); The Future Can Wait & Saatchi’s New Sensations, London (2013); The Black Country, Lion & Lamb, London (2013); Drawn (invited artist), Royal West of England Academy 2013); Obsessive Compulsive Drawing, Stephane Simoens, Knokke-Zoute, Belgium 2012); Polemically Small, Torrance Art Museum , California (2011); Vanitas; The Transience of Earthly Pleasures, All Visual Arts, London (2010); The Age of the Marvellous, All Visual Arts, London (2009); and Nowhere Is Here, Drawing Room London, Apex Portsmouth & Fruehsorge Contemporary Drawings, Berlin (2008).
Damien Roach (b. 1980, Bromley, Kent, UK) lives and works in London. He studied at the Royal College of Art. Roach’s sculptures, projections and installations challenge perception and ask the viewer to look at the world in a different way: to rethink the everyday visual forms and structures that surround us. He prompts this re-examination through subtle and sometimes barely noticeable alterations to objects, images and environments. Roach has exhibited in galleries including Tate Britain, IBID Projects, Gasworks and David Roberts Art Foundation, London, Arnolfini, Bristol and Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, and has work in the Zabludowicz Collection.
