Contents Preface by Sophie Kullmann
Migrations: On the Drawings of Alison Wilding by Anna Lovatt
Difficult conversations: The Notebooks of Alison Wilding by Penelope Curtis
Plates
In conversation: Alison Wilding and Rosie Cooper
Acknowledgements
Migrations: On the Drawings of Alison Wilding
by Anna Lovatt
Alison Wilding entered art school in the mid-1960s, a period of sweeping reforms in British art education. Two vignettes capture the kind of pedagogical experiments that were taking place and the shifting role of drawing within the curriculum. In 1966, during her Pre-Diploma at Nottingham College of Art, Wilding and her fellow students hitchhiked along the newly opened M1 motorway to make work in response to an assignment devised by Peter Cartwright and Stewart Lees on the ‘ethos of the petrol station’. 1 This exhilarating, risky and decidedly contemporary experience led to a series of works on paper that Wilding has described as her ‘first thinking drawings’. 2 The following year, Wilding began her Bachelor’s degree at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design in Chislehurst, where Gerard Hemsworth was a visiting lecturer. Hemsworth ‘poured scorn’ on life drawings the students had previously made, suggesting that they try drawing with their eyes shut, attaching sticks of charcoal to six-foot poles or working collaboratively on expansive sheets of paper. With Hemsworth’s encouragement, Wilding and others drove to Camber Sands in a Land Rover, where they made vast, transitory drawings with its tyres on the beach.3 As the life room and the studio receded in the rear-view mirror, these artist-educators and their students untethered drawing from conventional spaces, materials and techniques.
Simian Drawing 3 (detail), 2016 See p.226
Top: Artist’s notebook, 2010
Middle: Artist’s notebook, 2004
Bottom: Artist’s notebook, 2011
Artist’s notebook, 2017
Template Drawing #1, 2001
Ink and collage on Japanese paper
26 × 32 cm
William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, New York
Template Drawing #2, 2001
Ink and collage on Japanese paper
31.5 × 33.5 cm
William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, New York
Chimera 1, 2013 Ink, acrylic and pencil on paper
28 × 38 cm
Chimera 2, 2013 Ink, acrylic and pencil on paper 28 × 38 cm
Sleeping Dogs Drawing #2, 2019
Acrylic inks and collage on Japanese paper
28 × 38 cm
The Whitworth, University of Manchester
Sleeping Dogs Drawing #3, 2019
Acrylic inks and collage on Japanese paper
28 × 38 cm
The Whitworth, University of Manchester
Published in 2024 by Ridinghouse
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Cover: Flotation Drawing #2, 2019
p.2: Detail of Sleeping Dogs Drawing #4, 2019 pp.4–5: Detail of Subs 1, 2013 p.6: Detail of Cut Series Medium #3, 2020 pp.36–37: Detail of Head Series 11, 2014 pp.298–99: Detail of Simian Drawing 8, 2016 pp.302–3: Detail of Flotation Drawing #1, 2019
All imagery: © Alison Wilding. Courtesy of Alison Jacques Texts © Penelope Curtis, Anna Lovatt, Rosie Cooper and Alison Wilding
For the book in this form © Ridinghouse All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A full catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-909932-81-4
Ridinghouse Publisher: Sophie Kullmann Ridinghouse Senior Editor: Aimee Selby
Designed by Giulia Garbin assisted by Juliet Ramsden
Reprographic work: Dexters Pre-Media, London Production: Sophie Kullmann Printed in Italy by Verona Libri