Pencil-Line-Eraser: An Interesting & Worthwhile Exhibition at Carroll/Fletcher, London

Pencil-Line-Eraser: An Interesting and Worthwhile Exhibition at Carroll/Fletcher, London.

Michael Szpakowski reviews Pencil-Line-Eraser, the 'expanded' drawing exhibition at Carroll/Fletcher in London and finds a great deal to commend in it, though it also raises some knotty problems too…

http://www.furtherfield.org/features/reviews/pencil-line-eraser-interesting-and-worthwhile-exhibition-carrollfletcher

“Pencil / Line / Eraser, the current exhibition at Carroll/Fletcher, spanning both the main Eastcastle Street gallery and their nearby Riding House Street project space, is well worth a visit. It’s never less than engaging and there are several pieces that lodge, linger and ferment in the mind long after the bus or train ride home.

They describe the show as “surveying recent works in expanded drawing which use paper and line as a point of departure” and, let me say again, whatever I have to say that is critical you won’t waste your time there. Far from it.

This review will be in two parts – first, & with an innocent(ish) eye, I’ll sing the praises of the work that itself sang to me during my visit and then I’ll vent about the things that irritated me, more a question of contextualisation and commentary than of the work itself, although in today’s text ridden and intention trumpeting art world it’s sometimes a little difficult to unpick one from the other. Since the artists cannot completely escape responsibility this has consequence for any assessment of some of the work.” Szpakowski