Christine Mackey (Ireland)

July 2009

Project

Temporary Response Unit

Christine Mackey is currently pursuing a practice-based PhD at the University of Ulster, Belfast in Northern Ireland on drawing as a speculative field of inquiry where visual communication, exchange and knowledge intersect through the activity of ‘diagrammatics’.

This notion of drawing can be devised in a number of visual structures such as a plan, sketch, set of instructions, map, outline or notation depicting actions, processes, experiences as well as a method for thinking out ideas. Diagramming can provide a platform to develop a discursive exchange between on the one hand the action of drawing and on the other it’s potential for social-research. Combining diverse disciplines, subject matter and tactics this system can both reflect and reconfigure the relationship between space, visual data and social organization through an informed and communicative image making process.

Temporary Response Unit will function as a durational archive for observational research and the opportunity for public participation both in the gallery and on location. This project will orientate a playful approach and invitation to how we see and experience the world around us on a micro and social level through drawing. Building on existing elements constructed elsewhere that evolve and re-act to particular environments, for example; ‘Intimate Formations’ exists as a free hanging sculpture that is continually expanded and altered whenever a new situation is presented exploring in minute detail the morphology of plants. The work was initially inspired by John Millar’s essay on ‘Drawings That Question Diagrams’ a procedural process that involves the selection of a diagram which is copied by hand “over and over” again, compiled and presented as a book (infinitus). These hanging ‘samples’ expand the parameters of the subject matter into typographic minutiae of biological forms that creates a space for visual intimacy experienced by the viewer.

In 1913 Marcel Duchamp conceptualized chance and indeterminacy challenging traditional methodologies in developing art-works. ‘The Idea of the Fabrication’ outlined a way to make drawings that could be followed by the novice or the professional. Included in this exhibition is a set of instructions informed by Duchamp. The participant can attend and adapt this method for making drawings, which will be hung as a public installation during the residency. This event could locate drawing between art, its participants and discourse as a collective cultural process.

The final work for Drawing Spaces will be site-specific using a combination of digital drawing and sound tools that notates and responds to the city on foot projected as a transitory animated composition - between walking and drawing, drawing and listening, thinking and doing.


CV