From Ice & Water: Drawing in precarious environments with Sarah Casey, Emma Stibbon, Tania Kovats

Drawing Projects UK presented this live online Drawing Discussion on Thursday 17 November 2022. From Ice and Water: drawing in precarious environments, a discussion about drawing mediating between the human experience and environment, with guest speakers Tania Kovats, Emma Stibbon, Sarah Casey and convened by Anita Taylor. This Drawing Discussion was held in association with the current exhibition at Drawing Projects UK by Sarah Casey, Emergency!

Emergency! is an exhibition of new work by Sarah Casey developed in response to glacial archaeology. In 2018, at Valais Museums, Switzerland, Sarah began drawing artefacts that have emerged from alpine glaciers as the ice in which they have been preserved for 50, 500, or 5000, years is now melting at unprecedented rates. This glacial archaeology embodies a position of extreme precarity: these rare and valuable finds preserve important knowledge about the human past, yet insight comes at the cost of environmental change and threatened futures. This research was developed through a Henry Moore Institute Research Fellowship 2021 and undertaken in dialogue with Valais History Museum, Switzerland. The exhibition and associated events are presented as part of the Being Human Festival 2022 and supported by Lancaster University and Arts Council England.

Sarah Casey is a visual artist and researcher working at the cusp of drawing and sculpture. Her drawings exploring the limits of visibility and material existence arise from working alongside researchers from other fields, ranging from archaeology to astrophysics. Solo exhibitions of her work have been at Kensington Palace, The Bowes Museum and most recently at Ryerson University, Toronto. She also writes on drawing and is co-author of Drawing Investigations: graphic relationships with science, culture and environment (Bloomsbury 2020). She is Senior Lecturer in Drawing and Installation at Lancaster University, UK where she is Director for the School of Fine Art. Sarah was a Royal Drawing School Scottish Artist-in-Residence in 2020 and a Visiting Research Fellow at The Henry Moore Institute from 2020-21. Her current work explores the provocations of glacial archaeology. With Rebecca Birch and Jen Southern she is co-founder of the Rocky Climates network bringing together artists concerned with the mobilities and temporal, spatial, cultural instabilities of landscapes in uncertain times.

Tania Kovats makes drawings, sculpture, installations and large-scale time-based projects that explore our experience and understanding of the natural world. While Kovats is perhaps best known for her sculptures and drawings, her work encompasses a range of creative strategies, from map-making to writing, and she is also active as a curator, teacher and author. Kovat’s enduring themes are the experience and understanding of landscape, geological processes, patterns of growth and the intersection of landscape, nature and culture and how art can speak to our critical climate crisis. Recently she has focused on water as her central subject; the seas and oceans, river systems, maritime culture, flooding and tides, necessarily touching on socio-political and environmental concerns. Drawing is a central part of her practice and Kovats is a prominent advocate for its importance as a creative and reflective medium. She has written two acclaimed books on the subject, The Drawing Book (2006) and Drawing Water (2014) and is Professor of Making & Drawing at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art Design at the University of Dundee.

Anita Taylor is an artist, curator, educator, and founding director of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize and Drawing Projects UK; she is a Professor of Fine Art and Dean of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art Design at the University of Dundee.

Pease note that this is a live recording of an event held on Zoom and not a professionally filmed production.

[christineruston]

Fabulous work from all three artists. A wonderful example of how the arts can help engage people in thinking about these issues. Rather than saturating us with more frightening data, the work invites people in to the conversations and reminding us of the beauty of our environments. Thank you.