Upstairs at The Art Shop, Cross Street

ink drawings . sketchbooks . small paintings

*LUCY WILL BE RUNNING A DRAWING WORKSHOP ON FRIDAY 11 APRIL AT THE CHAPEL. MORE DETAILS HERE

LUCY ALGAR – BA MA FHEA is an artist, performance designer and educator. She is Course Leader of the BA Theatre Design course at Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL. Drawing is the process she connects with most often in all areas of her practice and teaching. She encourages her students to discover the many ways in which drawing can bring forth design solutions and her own work is an ongoing investigation into capturing the movement of performing bodies, landscapes and trees in fluid, unbroken lines. Lucy has a drawing, of the oak trees that grow on the lower slopes of the Sugar Loaf in the 2024/25 Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize exhibition currently touring the UK. Now living in London, Lucy grew up in Somerset and visited Abergavenny often as a child as her grandparents lived there.

‘This exhibition reveals my recent investigations, through drawing, into performing bodies and the ways in which we perceive the movement of trees in the landscape. In 2023 I was lucky enough to work, with dancers and choreographer Hyoung Min Kim, in Seoul and it was there that I discovered the beautiful ink that I made most of these drawings with. It is a particularly generous material offering both precise lines and messy pools to work into and refine. Often, I am forced to wait as the ink suggests new energies and forms, before I make more marks. I am conscious that all my work, whether 2D or 3D, is made in relation to set and costume design and the questions theatre designers ask themselves and their collaborators when designing for performance. I question where to place lines on paper as if they were performers on the stage, constantly considering scale and depth, light and shadow, upstage and downstage and space and silence. These considerations are as necessary to my process whether I am working in a rural landscape or an urban dance studio.

My work as an educator helps me discover new ways forward in my own work and the drawing performance workshops I run with dancer/choreographer Kirill Burlov lie at the heart of all my practice.’

‘Lucy’s drawings challenge us to address scale and physicality. They are grounded in movement, whether that be dancers across paper or swaying trees in landscape. The relationship between figure, music and hand are unconscious: they evolve organically as she draws and collaborates with the dancers. Her international practice and training is rooted in set and costume design, helping us and her students understand the power of movement and where our eye is drawn.  As the dancers move across the floor their movements are mirrored in ink. The space between allows us to see.’  Carol Swords FRSA, Creative Programming and Interpretation Manager Kensington Palace, Historic Royal Palaces

Useful links –

instagram/drawingperformanceproject

tangibleterritory.art

trinitybuoywharfdrawingprize.drawingprojects

THE SIMPLE AND AFFORDABLE WAY TO BUY ART – Interest free credit on all original artwork over £100. Ask us for more details or click the link above.