Gestural Reflective & Inquirying Tales - G.R.I.T. at Drawing Projects UK in Dundee

G.R.I.T. - Gestural, Reflective and Inquiring Tales: a painting exhibition bridging Europe

DATES & TIMES: 13 September - 12 October 2024, Wed - Sun, 12-4pm, ticketed entry only

EXHIBITION VENUE: Drawing Projects UK, Scotland – Corner of West Bell Street & Constitution Road, Dundee, DD1 1EX

The exhibition, Gestural Reflective and Inquiring Tales (G.R.I.T.), features fourteen painters from the UK and Europe, and explores how gesture and its physicality in contemporary painting engage both the maker and the viewer. With international contributors, G.R.I.T. aims to bridge a conversation about painting across Europe, and the exhibition will be shown first in Berlin, Germany, and then in Dundee, Scotland. Through these two iterations, the project aims to develop a model for sustainable artistic exchange. Beyond the exhibitions, a public program and a symposium will be held in each location, and it is intended to produce a publication.

G.R.I.T. assembles a group of fourteen painters, and the exhibition illuminates the ways painting relates to its viewers by focusing on the idea of bodily engagement through gesture. The titular acronym hints at the complexity of this relation: gestural, reflective, inquiring tales. The artworks in this show invite contemplation and, at the same time, reveal an experience that mirrors the process of making a painting. The works provoke thought and exert a pull upon viewers. They demand commitment. However, G.R.I.T. does not attempt to oversimplify the mystery of the relationships that painting engages. In his 2019 essay collection, The Observer Effect: On Contemporary Painting, the critic and poet Barry Schwabsky speaks about this engagement. “(We) should not overlook,” writes Schwabsky, “what gives painting its importance to art, is that it derives from the essence (body) of both the maker and the viewer.” Accordingly, G.R.I.T. centres the presence of the artists’ process, as found in the raw and immediate marks which physically and psychologically resonate with the viewers.

Artists: Angove, Jacopo Dal Bello, Jenny Eden, Rao Fu, Ina Gerken, Alena Hil, Erika Krause, Eglė Otto, Alex Roberts, Geraldine Swayne, Anita Taylor, Henry Ward, Waldemar Zimbelmann, Michaela Zimmer

Curator: Alex Roberts. Roberts is a British painter based in Berlin and Dundee who intermittently curates art exhibitions and platforms of exchange which seek to examine how painting beholds the viewer.

Exhibition Venue: Drawing Projects UK is dedicated to research and development, production and presentation of exhibitions, events and workshops in drawing and contemporary art, and operates on a non-profit basis. Established in 2009 to deliver the Trinity Buoy Wharf [then the Jerwood] Drawing Prize annual open exhibition, amongst other projects, a centre for Drawing Projects UK was opened in 2015 in Trowbridge, Wiltshire. The centre for Drawing Projects UK in Dundee will open to the public in 2025.

Located on the corner of West Bell Street and Constitution Road in Dundee, the former Bell Street Public Hall will form the exhibition and project space for Drawing Projects UK. With its entrance on Constitution Road, this heritage space provides an atmospheric venue for the G.R.I.T. exhibition. There is level access to the building and a disabled parking space outside the entrance; however, there are currently no washroom or other visitor facilities. Visiting the exhibition is strictly by pre-booked, timed entrance

See: www.drawingprojects.uk Instagram: @drawingprojectsuk @drawingprojectsscotland

More information about the exhibition and events programme is available via www.paintinggrit.com and @painting_grit

Host or Publisher Drawing Projects UK