Drawing Is/Not Building
Roland Snooks
Sarah Treadwell
Simon Twose
curated by Simon Twose
24 April – 28 June 2015
This exhibition presented the work of three architects who have a theoretical interest in drawing. Simon Twose, Sarah Treadwell and Roland Snooks respectively teach at Victoria University of Wellington, University of Auckland, and RMIT in Melbourne. Each approaches drawing not merely as a preliminary stage in a design process, but as an instrumental means to determine how matter is formed, shaped, constructed and, perhaps, felt. They argue that the material entanglements of drawing are usually hidden, cleaned away by the presence and seriousness of buildings the drawings are deemed to represent. Yet these delicate, complicated things figure the designer’s spatial understanding and are the tissue of architecture; they are the making of it.
Roland Snooks looks at possibilities offered by the shared authorship of human and computer; Sarah Treadwell merges the conventions of architectural rendering with hand-drawn processes to access the oceanic, and Simon Twose works in the space between building and drawing, by using concrete at full scale as his medium. The three put material engagements in focus and question building and representation to distil the potentialities in drawing.
This project was curated for the Adam Art Gallery by Simon Twose. It was supported by the Faculty of Architecture and Design, Victoria University of Wellington and School of Architecture and Planning, National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, University of Auckland.
This exhibition was staged concurrently with Living Cities 2011-.
Roland Snooks, AgentBody Prototype, 2015 (detail), cut steel, aluminium. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Roland Snooks, detail view of AgentBody Prototype, 2015, cut steel and aluminium. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Simon Twose, Concrete Drawing, 2014-5, concrete, polystyrene, wax, photographs and graphite. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Simon Twose, Concrete Drawing, 2014-5, concrete, polystyrene, wax, photographs and graphite. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Simon Twose, Concrete Drawing, 2014-5, concrete, polystyrene, wax, photographs and graphite. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Simon Twose, Concrete Drawing, 2014-5, concrete, polystyrene, wax, photographs and graphite. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Simon Twose, Concrete Drawing, 2014-5, concrete, polystyrene, wax, photographs and graphite. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Simon Twose, Concrete Drawing, 2014-5, concrete, polystyrene, wax, photographs and graphite. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Simon Twose, Concrete Drawing, 2014-5, concrete, polystyrene, wax, photographs and graphite. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Sarah Treadwell, Oceanic Section 1 & 2, 2014-5, mixed media on unstretched canvas. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Sarah Treadwell, Oceanic Foundations: Rising Water 1, 2014, mixed media on unstretched canvas. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Sarah Treadwell, Oceanic Foundations: Rising Water 1 & 2, 2014, mixed media on unstretched canvas. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Roland Snooks, AgentBody Prototype, 2015, cut steel, aluminium. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Roland Snooks, AgentBody Prototype, 2015, cut steel, aluminium. Installation view, Drawing Is/Not Building, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. Photo: Shaun Waugh
Roland Snooks, AgentBody Prototype 2015, cut steel, aluminium, video documentation
Roland Snooks, AgentBody Prototype, 2015, video documentation