Trees, Small Fires and Japanese Joints by Edward Allington

About

Professor Edward Allington, Head of Graduate Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, will present a series of drawings of trees, small fires and Japanese joints. Some are based upon the famous screen by Kano Eitoku (1543 - 1590), Cypress Trees, now in the Tokyo National Museum, some from other Japanese prints, some from observation, and others from comic books and a children's guide to Japanese carpentry.

Drawing has always been important to Allington. He collects volumes of ledgers, once used by companies for their financial records. Most are leather-bound and on extremely high quality paper. The entries, some faded, are in neat and formal manuscript. Allington draws over the rows of figures and texts, which add a layer of their own history to his ideas for sculpture or sculptural diagrams. Allington says, 'Sometimes the information on the paper gives me ideas as to how the drawing might develop. But the main reason [I use ledger paper] is because these are records of everyday life. I want there to be a contradiction between my illusionistic style of drawing and the paper. If you read the writing on the paper, you have to ignore the drawing, and if you want to read the drawing, you have to ignore the writing.'