Exhibition: Bleak Lines and Routine Despair, George Paton Gallery, September 2017

My Projects / October 14, 2017 / by Tahney

George Paton Gallery, October 2017

Curated by Tahney Fosdike

Through simple lines, sketches are phenomenal in their momentous creation, capturing fleeting moments and the mind’s angst in the everyday. Bypassing filtered concepts, the sketch exposes the psych through immediate interpretations of personal worlds. Within frank diarist sketches, Bleak lines and routine despair satirically explores the deeply anxious and fatigued elements of daily life.

While the backgrounds of the artists are diverse- based in Melbourne, Oregon, New York and Helsinki- their core representation of daily life exemplifies the commonality of the human condition. The artists, mostly practicing on online platforms, don’t ask for meaning within their existential dread. Instead, they damn the frustrating cycles filling their lives; boldly outlining what crawls under their skin.

Despite outwardly simple content, the sketch provides an acute study of human behaviour and the modern condition. While the work is sharply sarcastic and deeply melancholic, it is reassuring in its square look at routine despair. Despite the monotony of the daily grind, the self is continuously exposed to internal battles and ruthless environments. Rather than continuing to suppress the dreadfulness of the everyday making an honest and cynical retort demandable to expose what powers relationships with the self and others. Within the non-abstract and bold nature of sketch, the savage, disillusioning and exhausting characteristics of life are bared.

Experimental Art Space- Everything, Everyday

Both autobiographical and a story of common human experience, the sketches in this space impose sardonic observations and encompass the intense emotion bound within the boring, frustrating and repetitive of daily life. Revealing and confronting the unspoken but universal, the complexities of life are boiled down to simple lines on paper.

Bode Burnout combines written word and sketch through a poetical whilst deadpan technique, articulating battles with identity and anxiety within daily realities.

Bleak Lines and Routine Despair George Paton Gallery
Who Am I
Pls
Stupid as Shit
Cute
I’m currently writing this
That’s Enough Hope
Lies to get you out of bed
Shirt

See more of her work: Instagram @bodeburnout and http://bodeburnout.bigcartel.com/

Celeste Mountjoy (Filthyratbag) sardonically commentates the unpolished but core aspects of life through observations of human dialogue and behaviour.

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Bleak Lines and Routine Despair George Paton Gallery
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Follow her work: @filthyratbag

Sarah Firth’s vibrant, bold palette produces a fluid dreamlike quality to her confronting narratives on the human condition revealed in everyday life.

Existential Crises
Feeling is a Form of Thinking
Humanity is an Ocean
Memory
Multidimensional Life
Responsibility

See more of her work: @sarahthefirth and http://www.sarahthefirth.com

Sofia Kolovskaya’s project “One Day One Sketch,” now in its fourth year, captures the daily grind delicately and honestly.

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To follow her project: @sofia.kolovskaya and https://vk.com/1day1sketch

Brit Ouchida’s diagrams are both aesthetic and conceptually expansive, encapsulating their experience in the world through relational dynamics, mental health, gender, sexuality and humour.

Bleak Lines and Routine Despair George Paton Gallery
Antidote, watercolour, ink
Loneliness, watercolour, ink
Healing, watercolour, ink
Heart + Mind, watercolour, ink, marker
Mood, ink, marker
Sea of Anxiety, watercolour, gouache, ink
Orlando, marker on paper

See more of their work: @britchida

Again? – West Glass Cabinet

Both autobiographical and a story of common human experience, the sketches in this space impose sardonic observations and encompass the intense emotion bound within the boring, frustrating and repetitive of daily life. Revealing and confronting the unspoken but universal, the complexities of life are boiled down to simple lines on paper.

Gorkie provides honest and sharp observations of the pressures of everyday life. Commenting on perpetual juxtapositions and downfalls within human existence, her diarist approach contains tonal elements of existential dread and despair.

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See more of her work: @gorkiegork

Liana Finck, although already an established cartoonist with regular contributions to The New Yorker and The Awl, creates sketches for Instagram to draw on creativity uninhibitedly, minimising her own self-conscious nature and the forcefulness of deadlines. As a result, she explores her different moods through reflecting on her struggles with relationships, work and mental health. Confronting and humorous, her work is jarringly impactful in its simplicity.

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See more of her work on her “public sketchbook” (aka Instagram): @lianafinck

The Sketchbook – Vitrine Space

“The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.” – Robert Henri (1865-1929)

The sketchbook is an understated but central component to artistic practice. While overlooked as preliminary to larger concepts and products, the sketchbook captures momentous creativity and fleeting moments of the inspired mind.

Sofia Kolovskaya document her frequent travels in an ongoing project she calls her “travelbook.” Originally from St Petersburg and now based in Helsinki, the nomadic artist uses her travelbook to absorb and depict the diverse characters of places she finds herself in.

Antwerpen, Belgium, liners, golden marker on paper
Hamburg, Germany, liners, fragments from theatre brochure, red pencil

To follow her project: @sofia.kolovskaya and https://vk.com/1day1sketch

Gorkie is acutely aware of her surroundings, creating about four sketches a day. Her rough, simple works are sharp observations of daily life, especially as a young person navigating the world.

Untitled works, highlighter and marker on paper

See more of her work: @gorkiegork

1 Comment
  • grandpappy October 14, 2017

    loved it

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