No Straight Lines
Location: The Victoria Art Gallery, Bath
Date: 9th May to 10th June 2007
Drawings 1963-2007
Stephen Fry
For opening times click here: The Victoria Art Gallery. A great many people claim not to be able to ‘draw a straight line’. Maggi Hambling sees no straight lines in any part of nature she is moved to draw: people, animals or the sea. Drawing is the most direct and intimate of the artist’s strategies and at the core of all her work. She is one of very few contemporary draughtsmen of real distinction.
In each of these 20 drawings, together with rarely-seen sketchbooks, Hambling achieved a potent language of marks. The drawings ranged from the powerful Rhinoceros in Ipswich Museum, 1963, drawn when the artist was seventeen, to the delicate drawing of Sir Georg Solti conducting, 1985, and included memorable images of the artist’s parents, of Amanda Barrie, John Berger, Stephen Fry and Henrietta Moraes. A single bronze sculpture – ironically titled Line, created in 1996 – formed the centrepiece of the exhibition. All other recent works encapsulate the energy of the waves of the North Sea. In charcoal, graphite or ink, a unique life-force is manifest. And there are no straight lines.
Her work is represented by Marlborough Fine Art, London, who have also produced the exhibition catalogue. The loan of drawings to this exhibition by the Ashmolean Museum, British Museum, Tate Collection, private collections and the artist herself is gratefully acknowledged. (This exhibition was previously at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).
This exhibition included rarely seen sketchbooks and drawings including the artist’s most recent work, on show for the first time in this touring exhibition.
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