Thursday, 15 September 2016

News from the Library and new books on Drawing

The Library has been very busy over the summer installing a New Library Management System. This has allowed the Library to re-look at some of its policies in the hope to improve its services to users.

NEW LOAN ENTITLEMENTS:
All students are now entitled to borrow up to 10 items at any one time. In addition Headphones, Laptops and Visual Rulers are available to borrow (For use in the Library only).

HELP TO AVOID OVERDUE FINES:
2 days prior to the item being due back to the library you will receive an email. This is to remind you about your items on loan and that you need to return the items or renew them. If you would like to keep using them, please click on the blue web-link in the e-mail. This will take you straight to your Library account where you can click on a renew button to extend the date on your library loans. You can do this up to five times before you have to physically bring to item into the Library to renew. 

From your Library Account page you can also search the Library catalogue.  Hopefully the new e-mail alert system will help you avoid overdue Library Fines

If you need help logging into your Library account, searching the Library Catalogue or reserving books please ask at the Library counter; and we will be happy to help.  Equally if you need help in accessing the Library’s databases please just ask.

NEW LIBRARY STUDY AREAS:
The Library’s space has been slightly re-organised, in addition to the main Library there are now two quiet study rooms; one is for complete silent study and the other is for quiet study, where quiet conversation will be allowed.

Click HERE to explore the new look Library catalogue.

NEW LIBRARY BOOKS ON DRAWING


An increased public and academic interest in drawing and sketching, both traditional and digital, has allowed drawing research to emerge recently as a discipline in its own right. In light of this development, "Writing on Drawing" presents a collection of essays by leading artists and drawing researchers that reveal a provocative agenda for the field, analyzing the latest work on creativity, education, and thinking from a variety of perspectives. "Writing on Drawing" offers consolidation, discussion, guidance and an agenda to a fragmented community in the form of essays by international drawing makers and drawing researchers. Discussion extends to creativity, education and thinking, all with multi-disciplinary viewpoints. An essential resource for artists, scientists, designers, and engineers, this volume offers consolidation, discussion, and guidance for a previously fragmented discipline. Drawing research is emerging as a discipline in its own right. Very few resources exist to support the international community which consists of artists, scientists, designers, engineers - both within academia and in practice. It includes essays by leading drawing makers and drawing researchers with international reputations. Steve Garner is Director of the international Drawing Research Network. This currently has 300 members internationally and a well visited web site.

This work presents a selection of over one hundred important works from the Tate Collection, from William Blake to Andy Warhol, selected by the British artist Avis Newman. The presentation of rarely-seen drawings by so many major artists will make fresh and startling connections between their work and give new insights into their creative processes. 


In an era which has seen many forms of artistic creation becoming digitized, the practice of drawing, in the traditional sense, has remained constant. However, many publications about the relationship between drawing and thinking rely on discipline-dependent distinctions to discuss the activity's function. "Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner" redefines drawing more holistically as an enactive phenomenon, and makes connections between a variety of disciplines in order to find out how drawing helps us understand the world. Instead of the finite event of producing an artifact, drawing is a process and an end in itself, through which the practitioner might gain self-awareness. By synthesizing enactive thinking and the practice of drawing, this volume provides valuable insights into the creative mind, and will appeal to scholars and practitioners alike.

Features work by 50 artists including Susan Hauptman, Paul Noble, Jeff Gabel, Tracey Emin, Jane Harris, Erwin Wurm, Cornelia Parker, David Shirgley and Sarah Woodfine.

This is the third book in the innovative TRACEY series on contemporary drawing. Drawing Ambiguity builds upon its predecessors, Drawing Now and Hyperdrawing, by proposing that a position of ambiguity, a lack of definition, is not only desirable within fine art drawing but also necessary - having the capacity to enable and sustain drawing practices. What happens if we are ambivalent to what is a drawing, or what drawing is? Russell Marshall and Phil Sawdon bring together multiple perspectives from within and without the fine art drawing field to respond to these questions. Contributors include artist Ilana Halperin, artist-researcher Deborah Harty, artist and founder member of the group Underworld Karl Hyde, the creative collaboration Kreider + O'Leary, artist, writer Michael Phillipson, artist, academic Rob Ward, editors Marshall and Sawdon together with an Introduction by the artist, writer and curator Derek Horton.

In hyperdrawing: beyond the lines of contemporary art, authors and artists come together to explore the potential of what drawing in contemporary art theory and practice might become. In this follow-up to 2007's drawing now: between the lines of contemporary art, Phil Sawdon and Russell Marshall, two of the current directors of TRACEY, curate contemporary drawing within fine art practice from 2006 through to 2010. Four essays and images from 33 international artists collectively explore the boundaries of the hyperdrawing space, investigating in essence what lies beyond drawing - images that use traditional materials or subjects whilst also pushing beyond the traditional, employing sound, light, time, space and technology. Over and above traditional views and practices, the authors and artists in this book recognise and embrace the opportunities inherent in the essential ambiguity of drawing. Practitioners of hyperreal works, 2D3D4D pieces and installations that push beyond photorealism all find their place within this new conception of hyperdrawing as techne, a productive space no longer limited by spatial boundaries. Artists including Catherine Bertola, Layla Curtis, Garrett Phelan, Suzanne Treister and Ulrich Vogl alongside the essays of Emma Cocker, Siun Hanrahan and Marsha Meskimmon provide a contemporary view in both visual and written form of how ambiguity can be used as a strategic approach in drawing research and practice. A gallery in book form, hyperdrawing takes drawing beyond the interaction of pencil and paper and traces contemporary adventures in multiple dimensions and alternate realities.

From John Currin's old-master-style Playboy bunnies to Elizabeth Peyton's fin-de-siecle portraits; from Julie Mehretu's dizzying, multilayered architectural landscapes to Shahzia Sikander's multipatterned miniature ones; from Yoshitomo Nara's angry and enigmatic little girls to Kara Walker's stereotypical negresses; and from Barry McGee's caricatures of urban graffiti to Matthew Ritchie's cosmological diagrams - drawing is back, if it ever went away. In contrast to the digitized, multimedia direction that much of contemporary art has taken in the past decade, drawing has become a major and arguably parallel mode of expression for many of today's most important young artists. Drawing Now, published to accompany the first major survey of contemporary drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 15 years, contains more than 100 colour reproductions of work by 26 international artists, both well-known and emerging, that demonstrate the fascinating variety of methods and approaches, mediums and scales, apparent in this old-again, new-again art. Accompanying essays by the exhibition's curator, Lara Hoptman, explore eight themes that she perceives in the field - Drafting and Architecture; Mental Maps and Metaphysics; Popular Culture and National Culture; Fashion; Likeness and Allegory; Envisioning a City; Science and Art; Comics and other Subcultures; and Ornament and Crime - and provide key impulses behind drawing's recent resurgence. 



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