Drawn: a Contemporary Drawing exhibition

This is Riverside’s love letter to the creative practice of drawing. This show highlights the varied drawing-based mediums and how artists today incorporate drawing into their creative practice in new, innovative, and experimental ways. As you explore the gallery, we invite you to explore the ways in which drawing is foregrounded, the ways drawing might be used to articulate the overall work in a supportive manner, and the ways in which drawing may not be immediately apparent, but upon closer inspection is involved in the underlying mechanics, the architecture of the piece itself. 

The works throughout the exhibition offer a kaleidoscopic array of modalities in which the line, the pencil, the pastel, the ink embolden and invigorate each artist’s subject. When planning the exhibition, we were compelled by this idea, how to organize a show that is stitched together not by some thematic plot, but by the raw tools and processes themselves. Drawing is not simply a ubiquitous medium in which artists create, but it is its own brush, palette knife, needle, knife, eraser, pigment. It is a means in which to bring praxis to the imagined. 

Riverside extends our gratitude to Brian Young, our guest juror for this exhibition. This show features 40 works by 29 incredible artists.