Drawing Room Summer School: The Body Politic

Drawing Room are pleased to launch 2017’s Summer School, a week long programme of dynamic workshops run by professional artists at the gallery in Bermondsey, London.

Ideal for both experienced and beginner artist practitioners, the workshop will enable you to develop work conceptually using a range of material processes. The title of this year’s Summer School is The Body Politic, and calls for all those interested in developing work around this broad and timely theme.

The workshop leaders are artists Joy Gerrard, Markus Vater and Phoebe Boswell, each an acclaimed artist whose work has a strong relationship with drawing.

Participants work in the large gallery space with materials provided by Drawing Room, building new skills and techniques on a small and large scale, working both independently and collaboratively. They also have use of the unique Drawing Room Study library for reference and research.

The Body Politic

Over the course of the week, we will think about the artist both as witness and protagonist. Based on the themes of our current exhibition ‘Graphic Witness’ (to 9 July), the week-long artist led workshops will explore drawing as a graphic means to bear witness, comment on injustice and to prompt social change.

Through workshops we will explore through drawing questions such as: How might we bear witness to the political world around us; particularly as it changes and transforms so explosively? How do we look at the individual versus the collective in today’s networked society? What materials can we employ to convey meaning? Is it possible to protest through our work? How is the body politic?