Playing with Gesture

Playing with Gesture is an exhibition bringing together five artists, who in different ways, use figure drawing to inform their work.

This exhibition was inspired by Marianne Malmstrom whose long life drawing practice changed course when attending one of Denise Durkin's life drawing sessions with the intention to experiment with drawing using an ipad.  Her medium was warmly accepted by Denise and so the journey began.

Artist Denise Durkin is well known for her highly gestural figurative drawings. Denise teaches life drawing at Inverlochy Art School, her work has been exhibited widely and is included in multiple private collections. For this exhibition, Denise presents life drawing as a reflection of her constant practice. Long pages of flowing lines and quick observations, have been hand-bound into two "books" whose contents spill out from the covers and down the gallery walls. These artworks chronical the artist's energy, dedication and constant searching. Life drawing is presented as action. 

Meanwhile, Christine Massey's figure studies capture the emotions of both sitter and the artist. 'These drawings are not what one might consider "the finished product", writes Massey. "They are exploratory practices, each observation aimed at finding not just what the eye can see but the thoughts and feelings parallel to the process. Each drawing is an instinctive decision to refine and condense". Alongside her pencil drawings, viewers may also enjoy four art medals from her series The lure of Patupaieirehe. These dancing figures cast in bronze seem to leap off the pages of her sketch books: drawings made solid. 

Maria O'Toole's long and impressive career as an artist, tutor and researcher started with life drawing. Behind her lyrical abstract drawings is the constant question "how do you talk about the body if the body is not there?" Influenced by sensory experiences of space and observations of the rhythms within them, the layers of marks built in Maria's evocative works are almost sculptural - a memory of embodiment. 

Christine Winbush's lively, tongue-and-cheek sculptural practice uses the figure to convey narrative and humour. For this exhibition she presents ceramic busts of expressive, wrinkled women cradling frogs. On the work, Winbush writes:

Sometimes fairytales do not come true.

Sometimes frogs are only frogs, no matter how many times they may be kissed.

Sometimes princesses grow old, still holding onto their belief that maybe this one, this frog, will be the prince she has waited for. 

Sometimes there is only hope left to hold on to.

And sometimes, the princess is simply, just holding onto a frog.