Exhibition text

De Man’s Rock-Drawing Exchange works on paper revolve around a simple transaction: a rock in exchange for a drawing of it. I have recently agreed to this trade. My object, a tiny cube of shattered, reinforced glass, is not a rock in the expected sense, but it will be hard to part with, connected to important memories. De Man spends time retracing these memories; the resulting drawings, intricately detailed and realistically observed, are almost photo-real in quality. This illusionary quality, where line and shading becomes form, is a challenge that de Man enjoys but also likes to disrupt. In another ongoing series where she draws stone tools, hand written notes bring us back to the hand of the artist – to the flat surface of the paper and the graphite and pigment that collects there. For de Man, drawing is a way of looking more closely, of slowing and moving through time. Maurice Merleau-Ponty comments in Phenomenology of Perception ‘Nothing is more difficult than to know precisely what we see’.[i] De Man’s drawings do not solely represent, instead they bridge that which is known and physical with thought, memory and imagination. As de Man states, it is the relationships that we have that are special.[ii] Her drawings give shape to these relationships and connections.

The mapping of thoughts and experience through drawing connects de Man closely to the works of Clare Smith. Included in this exhibition are works from her series of Chemo Day Drawings, made whilst undergoing cancer treatment. Vibrantly coloured and filled with rich patterns of freely flowing swirls and lines, their energy belie the hours of stillness, waiting and uncertainty experienced during her treatment. These 5-6 hour periods became, as Smith has described, ‘a date with drawing’ [iii] – a time to draw intuitively without judgement and to mark presence. With their swirling lines, dots and forms, there are parallels to be drawn with the automatic and channelled drawings of spiritualist artists such as Georgiana Houghton and Madge Gill as well as the ‘pure psychic automatism’ of surrealism.[iv] Closer perhaps, is the influence of her Chinese and Malaysian cultural heritage – of fabrics and patterns subconsciously absorbed, whose colours and forms echo through these dynamic drawings. This influence is also inferred through the thin, Chinese calligraphic paper on which Smith works. She equates its fragility and strength to the body, its surface not passive but actively integrated with the inks, watercolour and pencils which it absorbs.

Returning to my initial question – what connects us? In the works of both de Man and Smith, time, our presence through it and the relationships we form are important themes. ‘All we have is time’, de Man has remarked.[v] How can we best make use of it?

Jacqui McIntosh, July 2022

[i] Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of perception, Italy: Routledge (2002), p.67 (first published in 1945)

[ii] Zoom conversation between Jacqui McIntosh and artists Mahal de Man and Clare Smith, 21^st June 2022.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Paraphrased from André Breton’s definition of Surrealism as ‘Psychic automatism in its pure state,’ 1924.

Breton, André, Manifestoes of Surrealism, United States: University of Michigan Press, 1969, p.26

[v] Zoom conversation between Jacqui McIntosh and artists Mahal de Man and Clare Smith, 21^st June 2022.