2024, ‘SKETCHBOOK 24’
Changing Room Gallery’s year closed with a special exhibition I had been dreaming up for several years now. ‘SKETCHBOOK 24’ invited a large group of artists to submit sketchbooks for visitors to flick through in an intimate viewing experience.
When I was 21, I asked a teacher in my diploma class if I could see their sketchbook, he asked me how old I was and then said he’d ‘someday soon’. He returned the next week with two sketchbooks, his current one along with one from when he was 21. I was given the time to look through his work and see the progression across the years, and to see the sketchbooks alongside finished works from an exhibition he had opened at the same time. It was a watershed moment for me, both the honour of being respected and encouraged by an established artist and the intimacy of seeing his personal pages changed the way I looked at art and pedagogy.
I have since wanted to explore the world of artists personal sketchbooks and to marry their finished works with their ideas for a viewing public. Upon realising that Nour and Nathan had similar ideas we hatched a plan to celebrate the end of the year with such a show. around 4 artists were invited to submit, with 20 asked to contribute a finished work to show alongside.
The resulting show was a massive success, feedback showed us it was an experience sorely missed in the art community and the night saw a broad range of artists and appreciators from emerging to established converge on the gallery for an incredibly joyous night. We decided to name the show ‘24’ in order to open up the opportunity to extend the exhibition over several years, and it is my hope that it will continue into the future.
Works in the show included carved wood and cast plaster, sculpted and blown glass, paintings, print medi, ceramics and collage.
Although we held concerns in the first place for sketchbooks being treated badly by an unassuming public, we were very pleasantly surprised with the respect people held for the books and their significance to the artists involved. We were left encouraged by the chances to continue this show into the future and expand on the possibilities a sketchbook viewing presents.
