Nowhere is Here

Nowhere is here is curated by Drawing Room and taps into the capacity of drawing to capture the contingent quality of the natural environment and our complex relationship with it. The artists hail from different parts of the world including Finland, Israel, Switzerland, Botswana and England and all are establishing international reputations. Each 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.

Axel Antas spends time with the natural environment, interacting with it in unconventional ways and then using photography and video to record his observations and interventions. Drawing forms a significant strand of his practice and he uses the resistant medium of the HB pencil to translate these photographic representations into drawings that possess an uncanny resonance of human activity which nonetheless eludes the viewer.  Nogah Engler shares a tangible relationship with the natural world – but it is more emotional than physical. Alternating between the mediums of drawing and painting she uses landscape and nature as metaphors for expressing experiences that deal with memory and history.  Franziska Furter uses pencil, ink and paper to make large scale drawings and sculptures which often use Manga as a starting point.  This imagery is dramatically altered as different settings are morphed and signifying features such as figures and speech bubbles are removed and the resulting image is subjected to a dramatic increase in scale. Reece Jones enacts a very physical relationship with his heavily worked charcoal drawings that are created through a process of drawing and erasure.  Tapping into a huge picture archive Jones marries both man-made and natural environments to create stage sets for dramatic incidents. Damien Roach’s practice spans drawing, watercolour, collage, video and sculpture but is characterized by a particular attention to form, colour and the visual quality of materials.  He elevates the status of the overlooked and forgotten through his subtle juxtaposition of objects and images to question our perception, knowledge and value systems.

A 48 page, full colour catalogue £8 (exhibition price: £6) has been published by Drawing Room to accompany the show.  The exhibition opened at Aspex, Portsmouth (29 March – 18 May 2008) and toured to fruehsorge contemporary drawings, Berlin, 20 September – 25 October 2008.

Axel Antas b.Finland 1976, based in London.  Solo exhibitions: 2008: Spacex, Exeter; Galleria Heino, Finland; Rokeby, London. Nogah Engler b.Tel Aviv, 1970, based in London. 2008: Beijing Biennial; 2007: Solo exhibitions, Ritter/Zamet, London; 2006: Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Franziska Furter b. Zürich, Switzerland, 1972, based in Berlin. Solo exhibitions: 2008: Galerie Schleicher + Lange, Paris; 2006: doggerfisher, Edinburgh & Galerie Friedrich, Basel. Reece Jones b. Gaberone, Botswana, 1976, based in London.  Solo exhibitions: 2008: Joe LaPlaca & Dickinson Fine Art.  London; 2005: Andrew Mummery Gallery, London; 2004: Rockwell, London. Damien Roach b.Kent, England 1980, based in London. Solo exhibitions: 2008: Sies & Höke, Düsseldorf, Germany; 2007: IBID, London & Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany; 2006: Gasworks, London.

Drawing Room Founding Patrons: Stephen Barber, Marie Elena Angulo and Henry Zarb, Sigrid and Patrick Wilkinson.

Corporate Patron: John Jones   www.johnjones.co.uk