To draw : reading, hand, other, doings : written components in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Master of Fine Arts, Massey University, Wellington

Abstract

Text making, object making, image making and mark making practices have to come together to have a peculiar conversation in and around drawing. Works sit parallel to one another and function simultaneously. Each inquiry poses a challenge to drawing related concerns, questioning its materiality, scale and medium. These works establish connections from drawing to language, the other, the hand, reading, and the future. Sympathetically, this exegesis holds together a set of separate yet connected ideas into a precarious composition. Comprised of four individual components of text, the parts that make up To Draw are placed down side-by-side rather than fixed in a set chronology. This forms a ambiguously open system, and as such has no beginning or end. To be read in any order: READING, HAND, OTHER, DOINGS. Reflecting upon the conventions that once defined drawing practice and mapping its shifts throughout the mid-late 20th century, To Draw: Reading Hand, Other, Doings offers itself in relation - even in opposition - to certain histories which claim drawing is a verb, or drawing as synonymous with process. Riding on lines drawn by art history, philosophy and semiotics and drawing together the work of Simon O’Sullivan, Catherine de Zegher and Jean-Luc Nancy, To Draw argues for the potentials in reconsidering drawing as a noun, or drawing as an object - drawing as something autonomous.