Pace Project for 2011

Welcome to this new blog which is part of the Pace Project at Brisbane Institute of Art in 2011. What is Pace? It is a series of three exhibitions and associated events being held at the newly renovated Brisbane Institute of Art during 2011. Thank you to Brisbane City Council & Arts Queensland for supporting this year-long project! 

 The overall aim of Pace is to make some good and useful connections between contemporary artists and the BIA community. The name came from thinking about possible ways I might be able to manage the pace of my life better, so that I have time to do some things slowly, while getting through other things very quickly. Pace looks at the ways artists, as creative and competent individuals, use their time to be able to make time-consuming artworks and to live their lives in an environment that is not always encouraging.

The first of the 3 exhibitions is called Drawling. It involves 6 artists whose works could be said to be slow or extended in some way. The name of the exhibition came from thinking about what slow drawing might be called - the kind of drawing that in a world of efficiency evokes the idea of taking much more time than appears to be necessary. The 'drawl' is that slow lengthened tone, dawdling along in speech, and already has some common ancestry etymologically with drawing - in the sense of extending or pulling something out, or to distance (withdraw), often an action associated with a slower pace of life.

For me it also involved the act of trawling - searching for artists for Drawling has had me trawling local galleries, the internet, and my recollection of works I have seen in the past to find the right combination of artists and works to make an exhibition that would hang together visually, and in which the works could act as a catalyst for connections between the artists and the BIA audience.

In the meantime, I took a short trip that had long been planned, to Japan.