Drawing attention: emerging British artists

Drawing attention,British Museum

Discover some of the most compelling emerging talents in the field of contemporary drawing, displayed alongside highlights from the Museum’s collection dating back to the early 1500s.

Emerging artists are taking the medium of drawing in new directions – using innovative approaches, methods and media. This exhibition spans a wide range of techniques and practices, including drawings using make-up on face wipes by Sin Wai Kin fka Victoria Sin, and a drawing made with chalk collected from the White Cliffs of Dover by Josephine Baker. The exhibition includes artists who have lived, studied or worked in the UK.

Several artists show how drawing, often considered a quiet or private medium, can be used to protest injustice. Catherine Anyango Grünewald has described the time and labour invested in her monumental drawings as a ‘direct homage’ to their subjects, often the victims of institutional crimes, while the painstaking detail of Irish artist Miriam de Búrca’s drawings of clods of earth from cilliní – the unmarked graves of those deemed unfit for Christian burial – force us to confront an uncomfortable history.

Over 20 new acquisitions will be shown for the first time alongside some of the most celebrated works from the Museum’s collection by the likes of Andy Warhol, Käthe Kollwitz, Odilon Redon, Mary Delany and Michelangelo, demonstrating their continuities with the existing collection, and their relationships to historical traditions of drawing. These artists include some of the youngest ever collected by the Museum during their lifetime, and represent some of the most exciting up-and-coming names in the field of contemporary drawing.

Please note the exhibition contains several works addressing themes of racial and sexual violence.

Duration 17 March 2022 - 28 August 2022
Times Daily: 10.00–17.00
Cost Free
Venue British Museum
Address Great Russell St, London, WC1B 3DG
Contact 442073238181 / information@britishmuseum.org / www.britishmuseum.org

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