(click image for more details)SS Patris - Train, 2008
Pencil on drafting film
50cm x 70cm
Ian Rawlinson's drawings are taken from found images sourced from internet web sites and daily newspapers. The 'SS Patris' (2005-08) drawing series developed from the artist's trawling categories of image (for example refugee camps, ships or bomb sites) to encompass a broader set of images that are characterised instead by their found status rather than their subject matter. The drawings are traced directly from their source and, in the case of those found in newspapers are composed according to their position in the layout of the newspaper where they were published.
The distinction between drawing and photography is foregrounded: can the apprehension of the image be arrested from the split second of the photograph and
the turn of a newspaper page to the sixteen hours or so of drawing and the subsequent viewer's use of the drawing in a gallery?
Rawlinson's sculptures are made from reclaimed materials such as plastic sheeting, steel and electrical lighting tubes. He utilises them in their original state, retaining the characteristics of the unaltered components. What unites both bodies of work is a stripping away of contextualising information, an act that leaves only the image/object under investigation by the viewer.
Paul Stone, 2008
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find out more about Paul Stone
