Collateral Drawing: ‘It’s like revealing the magic trick’

Co-curators and artists from the ongoing Collateral Drawing project reveal insights into their working processes and how exhibiting by products of their creation changes the way they think about their own practices

There is more to an artwork than its finished state. During the creative process, there are sketches and models made, photographs taken, paint spilled, notes scribbled. Sometimes the wall and floor around the work become companions to the work itself and, once the work is removed, severed umbilical traces remain, showing where lines continued, how thoughts developed, and where lost ideas went to hibernate.

Two years ago, BEASTON projects, a curatorial platform run by the artist, curator and teacher Bella Easton, began a project called Collateral Drawing, with the intention of showing just such “byproducts”, with a view to revealing something of the hidden – and sometimes subconscious – artistic process. The project, launched at Plymouth College of Art, is now in its fourth iteration, having also exhibited in Athens (Beton7, 2014) and Berlin (rosalux, 2015). The current version, showing at the Waterfront Gallery, UCS, includes installations by 16 artists with an East Anglian connection, each revealing something unique about their methods and exploring the relationship between the finished works (also on display) and the collateral elements.

Studio International spoke to Easton and her co-curator John Stark, both of whom are also exhibiting, as well as to a third participating artist, Trisant, about the ideas behind the project, their working methods, and how being involved has impacted on their thinking about their own practices.

Collateral Drawing
Waterfront Gallery, UCS, Ipswich
4 January – 19 February 2016

Interview by ANNA McNAY
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY