Draw: Conversations around the legacy of drawings.

‘Draw’ was the inaugural show at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, a major new venue for international art in the north east of England. The first show paired internationally active contemporary British artists with established modern masters, the intention being to investigate the current meaning of drawing in relation to these historical models of practice. I was paired with Joseph Beuys; the other pairings were Damien Hirst and Francis Bacon, Ceal Floyer and Marcel Duchamp, Gavin Turk and Andy Warhol, Chris Ofili and Henri Matisse, D J Simpson and Jackson Pollock, and Chantal Joffe and Pablo Picasso. The work I made and selected to exhibit with Beuys was intended to establish a clear contrast between Beuys’ vocabulary of symbols and myths, and my own compression of thought and experience into the uncertain moment of looking. Despite this fundamental divide, there was a correspondence between all the works from the perspective of material transformation