Contents May Be All Kinds Of Wonderful
Drawings by Mick Welbourn and Mike Ryder
Friday 21 - Sunday 23 February 2014
38b Peckham Rye, London
A two-man show from Mick Welbourn and Mike Ryder about drawing, marking, felt tip pens and bad backs...sort of.
Welbourn’s work has developed through his interests in repetitive actions, tracings, rubbings and how to not make images. Ruining his eyesight by making highly detailed drawings led him to work with a larger scale of line and surface, producing works that sit somewhere between drawings and sculpture. However, the vast and repetitive nature of this process caused him injury to his back and knees, and he is now looking for a new way of working that will cause him further physical harm.
Ryder’s practice takes in painting, photography and drawing. The work here was made over a seven month period on a daily commute, as an attempt to focus beyond chronic back pain and to find a way to continue to think and make whilst unable to resume normal practice. As Robert Frank puts it “Like a boxer trains for a fight”. These works are a commitment to maintaining a dialogue about looking and reacting, each one different from the last drawing, based on years of work and a sense of freedom to keep moving and betray everything just to see what happens.
This exhibition aimed to find links within their shared visual language. Art as cause and relief, if you will.
Mike Ryder (series of A4 drawings) & Mick Welbourn (large paper)