Sample-Studios in collaboration with CCAD Drawbridge at MTU

Drawbridge and Sample-Studios are collaborating on Drawing Connections – an exhibition and research project which explores drawing practice, experimental approaches, and begins by responding to drawings held within the Crawford Art Gallery drawing collection.

The 10 artists involved are MTU MA:AP Graduates, whose work delves into the expanded field of drawing practice as, for example: embodied act or performance, as site specific response or narrative, as a method of capturing and exploring interactive collaborations, etc.

An old-fashioned Drawing Room Mystery

Experimental filmed drawing performance, September 2022, 06:14 mins

For Drawing Connections, I chose Dial M for Milchofe, 1999, Suzy 0’ Mullane (1958) to artistically respond to from The Crawford Art Gallery’s drawing collection. O’ Mullane uses encoded imagery evolved over time to form suggestive references and personal symbolism. Commonalities in our respective practices include working in charcoal over a larger scale.

I attempted to decode O’ Mullane’s mysterious drawing, and in response, created my own symbolism through performative drawing actions whilst utilising props and themes from Alfred Hitchcocks 1958 feature film Dial M for Murder. Throughout the duration of the drawing, the action is also constrained to one room, toying with depth and space and playing off both the audience and character’s vantage points.

My filmed performance takes drawn rotations inspired by the dialling movement of a rotary phone to create a coded language. I play out two versions of myself; the ID, the primitive and instinctual part of the unconscious which contains all my urges and impulses whilst the Ego considers social realities and norms, etiquette, and rules in deciding how to behave, a “violent relaxation”. Both characters, taken from Freud’s theories around the human psyche take different approaches to carrying out M.U.R.D.E.R. through drawing actions.