Drawing and exploring
Getting started
Key information
In The never-ending line Kellie takes a drawing journey, exploring the environment and responding to it. To do this investigation Kellie uses her whole body and doesn’t worry about going off the edges of the paper. She invites us inside her drawings. We step into them and are surrounded by them. Within Kellie’s installation we can collaborate to make our own marks and mix them with the other marks throughout the space.
Drawing provocation
What do we discover when we use our whole body for drawing? What happens when we start from our bodies and draw outwards?
Find a place where you can draw freely—it may be somewhere like a school playground or an open courtyard. Somewhere you can draw in chalk, or somewhere at home like the back of the garage door, or it may be an area you can cover in paper, plastic, or a huge piece of cardboard. Start drawing at your own feet and see where your line takes you. Set off on a drawing journey and see what you discover in the process of following the line.
Watch the video to see Kellie's drawing performance with the Australian Dance Party and sound collaborator Michael Dick.
Research and discuss
Gosia Wlodarczak is another artist who goes on a drawing journey with her work; her dense and detailed drawings record what she sees and experiences. Instead of working in an artist’s studio and drawing on paper, she draws wherever she is. Sometimes she works on windows tracing things she sees through the glass and sometimes she draws on every surface around her body including the walls and floor, with herself as the centre of the drawing.
Research Gosia’s work and compare it with Kellie’s. In a group discuss what similarities and differences you can see in Kellie and Gosia’s lines and mark making. What do their marks express? How do their marks reflect the environments they explore?
