Friday 20th October 2006, 8pm-4am @ The Corsica Arts Club, London.
The theme of the show was “the experiment”, I chose to experiment with my drawing and the way in which I depicted and worked with my subject matter.
I’m interested in depicting characteristics of the objects I am drawing, a major characteristic is the way in which an object functions and/or is constructed. By using a number of drawings Images from the exhibition to show the disintegration of the football boot.
Part of a group show event, for one night only. Guerilla zoo is “a collective army of underground artists un-caged and exhibited to the public“. Guerilla zoo runs a quarterly one-night-only arts event in south London.
This is the third event in a series of underground happenings organised by Guerrilla Zoo.
Live drawing diary
On the night I’ll be drawing objects that people have with them, so bring something interesting along. The Drawing diary.
All the drawings will be pinned to a board on-site, which will act as a diary of the night in 2D object form.
I’ll be drawing your shoes, handbags, trainers, in fact anything that will fit on an A3 or A4 piece of paper
Skeletons & roses
In the main gallery area I’ll be displaying some event-specific drawings. Since the theme of the night is deadheads – fans of the grateful dead –
Skull sketches.
I’ve taken two of the symbols commonly associated with these people and drawn them.
Part of the orthographic projection drawing of a skeleton.
31 October – 10 November 2005.
House gallery
70 Camberwell church street, London, SE5 8QZ
An installation of drawings of objects from my east London flat.
The Drawings attempted to describe some of the character of my living room and the objects it contained. House gallery >>
The exhibition
The Living room exhibition contained a number of drawings created over several months in 2005, it referred to a period of time spent in the living room of my flat in east London.
Through the drawing of everyday objects I hoped not to create works of great glory but to refer to the everyday-ness of our normal lives.
An ordinary world
The more I learn and experience in my life the more I realise that the most amazing things surround us, objects and situations that we take for granted are in fact often works of great complexity and creativity. Why do you need ghosts and aliens when we are surrounded by such interesting and unique things, if you give ordinary objects a chance they will impress you, you do not have to travel to the moon to see something new?
The living room exhibition used the House gallery space to recreate a plan of my living room, complete with the objects that have been in it for the first 7 months of 2005.
The drawings were presented using flat boards which stand on the floor within the shape of my living room which has been mapped out on to the floor.
Century gallery
Cremer Street, London, E2 8HD
Apr 9 – 19, 2003 An exhibition of arrow installations.
Using scenarios gleaned from Music hall lyrics and pros I used my Number banners to explore a local historical feature in this part of East London.
The Century gallery exhibition was an exhibition of coloured arrows accompanied by text.
Arrows mapped out the movement and actions of scenarios described in old music hall songs. As situations, such as going up in a balloon, we described in a song, the arrows illustrated the movement and attitude of people and characters.
The overall effect was to create a feeling of action and dynamism that was described in the songs.
See images from the exhibition
The four music hall songs
I chose two music hall songs: “Up in a balloon” and “The Valet”.
Artist’s statement
Paul Doeman is a London-based artist, whose artwork is both urban and conceptual in style. Paul creates work in all media, including two and three dimensions; art and its creation can be seen as the use and application of tools. It is possible for the tool to become the subject art, and, it with this in mind, Paul uses situations, scenarios and stories to imbue life into tool-like art objects.
Calling on various themes for the subject of his work, which is often tool-like and practical in both purpose and appearance, Paul has exhibited at numerous solo and joint exhibitions. ‘Number Banners’ have frequently become the subject of area-specific installations at art galleries throughout England; this is also true of the Century gallery show.
See images from the exhibition.
Century gallery exhibition: “Music hall situations”
Using scenarios gleaned from Music hall lyrics and pros, Paul has again used Number banners to explore a localised feature.
The history of Music hall has strong ties with the area of East London where the Century gallery is situated.
Before the popularity of TV, Radio and the growth of the WWW, Music hall was one of the ways in which East Londoners relaxed and enjoyed themselves; popular Music hall songs were the pop music of their day.
Applying Number banners to Music hall scenarios illustrates, and takes literally the words of the entertainment and assumes these things really happened, or at least, what happens when Number banners are used as a proxy on behalf of the art viewer and the artist.
If there is an art form to which Britain can justly and proudly claim to have given birth, it is the music hall.
“A living entity of boundless vitality, it was a child of dubious parentage, whose father was the drawing-room ballad – the soirée motto song – the nationalistic air, and whose mother was the folk tune – the raucous carouse – the tender love song. This enfant terrible had all the disadvantages of being born on the wrong side of the blanket, yet despite this, and perhaps even because of this, it thrived upon sentiments of every stratum of society in an age when Britain was awakening to the realization of Empire. The infant music hall had but one watchword – ‘flamboyance’ – fired by an innocent, and as yet uninhibited, passion.”
Paddy Doyle holds world records for dozens of fitness and endurance records.
An installation of number banners and arrows at Banana gallery Birmingham.
23rd Jan’ – 19th February 2002.
I was invited to do a show in Digbeth, Birmingham at the Banana gallery. I chose to display some number banners in an installation which described some of the endurance records set by a local celebrity Paddy Doyle.
Some semblance of the endurance record rules for push-ups (two hands, one hand), back pack carrying, Samson’s chair and Brick carrying were used with Number banners to describe Paddy’s feats of strength.
Click on a thumbnail to see images from the exhibition.
Number banners are held upright, the official Guinness rules for each record attempt were written using a purpose-built font called Stencil Letters. The style of this font attempts emphasise the practical nature of the banners as tools.
Cardboard arrows accompany both the written rules and the banners; an added dynamism, allowing the situation to have a closer relation to the record breaking attempts of athletes like Paddy Doyle and the rules he had to obey.
31 October – 10 November 2005.
Century gallery
Creative Space, Field Row, Worthing.
