Late opening and tour of 'The Elemental Force of Charcoal' by historian Kate Aspinall

About

The Gallery will be open from 6pm, with the tour commencing at 7pm. To reserve your free place click here, and for further details please click here.

For this tour, Aspinall will draw on her extensive expertise on the role of drawing in 20th century British visual culture, placing the works on display in a wider historical context, and referencing seismic shifts that occurred in arts education and drawing practices of the 20th century.

The Elemental Force of Charcoal: Drawing at the Borough explores the development and use of charcoal by David Bomberg and the Borough Group, in works spanning nearly a century. It is through drawing that Bomberg first fashioned a language of image-making capable of both representing and expressing form and mass, in stark contrast to the perspectival drawing practiced in mid-century art schools.

Kate Aspinall is an independent historian, writer, and artist. Based in London, she recently completed her doctoral studies at the University of East Anglia, sponsored by the School of Art History Studentship, and currently consults for the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and serves as Chairwoman of the AAH Freelance and Independents. Her research looks to the role of drawing in early 20th century British visual culture with a particular emphasis on the intersections between institutional and personal discipline. Most recently, she wrote an article on the role of the drawn mark within Herbert Read’s critical agenda for a special issue of Visual Resources (February 2016). She is currently working on a monograph, The Paradox of Medium Specificity: Drawing Practice and Twentieth Century Modernism in Britain.