Grieg Burgoyne UCA Farnham Fine Art tutor, has an exhibition from 1st until 28th October. The exhibition "Scapelands" is held at Drawing Box Tournai gallery, Belgium, and feature new work.
‘Evidence of reality had never been as pressing as in this slip toward disappearance’
‘At certain times it seemed to me this transparency was the only solid ground that remained to me, and, if I went forward, it was by resting on my own image thus reflected, while this reflection was perpetuated to infinity, indifferent to the ruins of time. A reflection that had no doubt attracted me by its fragility. The assurance that in resting on it, I would inevitably fall fast, but the fall was infinite, at each moment of the fall the reflection formed again under my steps indestructible’ 1
Scapelands is a reflection of sorts, where anomalies of spaces within the site have been studied, debated and in turn amplified, expanded upon and even imploded. Process-led and rule based Burgoyne is extending his exploration of repetition, duration and accumulation through drawing in the broadest sense.
Scapelands is a term given by J.F Lyotard to suggest estrangement from a place, as though one is alien to it, the known of landscape becomes unknown.
From Photocopy paper, dry-board markers to highlighters, the ubiquitous media of the office slides from a functional logic and clarity to another whilst paradoxically still bearing order and logic albeit of another kind. In doing so, magnify formal credentials of weight, colour and line.
Scapelands pushes body and site relations proposing we re-negotiate generic space and enter a new and transformative dialogue with space that may both alienate yet offer greater potential than otherwise exists.
Scapelands offers three propositions to navigate. Awkward concentrations of paper, both comical and absurd through process and rules have established themselves at odds with the seemingly clear geometry of the gallery site, having collapsed perhaps the very symmetries of the space. In doing so, pull together an infinite potential of space from a finite and bound sense of place. These rolled spaces are complemented by wall drawings at key points within this long narrow space. The wall works as Schematic and playful games seek to debate the space we think we know with a reactivated space we might be now encountering.
These like all Burgoyne’s works he sees as propositions only completed or brought into being as a context they are in, through what Burgoyne calls theirmultiple entry and exit points of interpretation and representation. As drawings be they volumetric or spacial aim to advance this notion of becoming where drawing and meaning is in constant transformation or as J.L Nancy calls it ‘ the truth... where one is the movement of appearances as unfinished and its becoming infinite’2
Absurd and ridiculous as it maybe Scapelands is engaged in the serious play of drawing as it grapples with process and idea, thinking, body and space.
Through markmaking, endurance and a tactile rapport with space Scapelands is a contingent and speculative re-appraisal of limits and all that is fixed.
Through gallery 2 the starting point was the irregularities of 2 doors- 1 whole, full the other divided by a wall, part blocked – a space disunited from its forming.
Burgoyne sought to bring this form/ space anomaly together not represent it. Through rules of measurement and process he was keen to offer up anafterimage through an accumulation of experience of the markmaking generate in ones mind the space lost. Highlighters draw our attention to things, the text we read, and an aide memoire no less. In calculating the number of pairs of post-it notes required to make up the lost space Burgoyne offers a fugitive experience of the tension between the temporal and stable-that which exists but cannot be seen. The result both mentally and physically sees walls and floor shift in competing flux as one moves in and around the space.
Indeed only in closing our eyes we might see momentarily the space lost.
Scapelands is drawing as reality of disappearance where neither inside or outside may prevail.
1 celui qui ne m’accompagnait pas / someone standing apart form me
Blanchot Maurice 1953 editions gallimard
2 Le plaisir au dessin/ The pleasure in drawing
Nancy J.L
translated by Philip Armstrong 2013 Fordham University Press NY
Biography
Greig Burgoyne uses the materials of the office, ranging from post-it notes to flipchart markers, photocopy paper, BIC biros to highlighter pens. Burgoyne is attracted by what happens when you extend their regularity and standardised credentials of colour, characteristics of line, weight, absorbency, or opacity.
Alongside this the work is driven by a process led/ rule based repetition, endurance and accumulation whose starting point is key aspects of the site the work is to be made for; its hierarchies, and energies of distribution as they relate to space. Burgoyne wrestles between a recording of a space-e.g. It’s physical, static volumes or dimensions with the perception and experience of moving in and around the space itself.
The resulting drawing installations, films and wall drawings Burgoyne sees as finite propositions, only completed or brought into being as a result of the context they are in. In doing so, inviting the audience to play a part in the completion of the work whilst challenge /and at other times liberate, our rapport with space beyond something contained and subsequently closed to further development.
Greig Burgoyne was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He studied at the HAK Vienna and MA painting Royal College of Art, London. Recent Solo projects 2014/15 include WhiteNoise Centre for Recent Drawing London; Gapfillers Briggait project SPACES 1+2 wasps studios Glasgow;FAX Karst Plymouth (group show); Apparatus L’Escaut Architectures Brussels (group show);OMON RA The Drawing project IADT Dublin; We are all alternative structures TAP Southend UK (group show);What is line and how does it moves through space? Frost Art museum, FIU Miami Florida USA (with performance artist Yumino Seki)
Forthcoming projects include Scapelands Drawing Box Belgium; Patricia Fleming projects Glasgow; La Brasserie CAC Arras France
