Artworks
2015 FNB JOBURG ART FAIR
11 – 13 September 2015
Lucy Jane Turpin
What happens between mind, body (hand) and the drawing (as product)?
Drawing as experience is primary to Lucy Jane Turpin’s practice and to her understanding of the various processes that drawing encompasses. Her focus is on the core devices that orchestrate the materiality of drawing, namely ‘blankness’, automatic flow and the coming together of intention, gesture and act. Chilean biologist, philosopher, and neuroscientist Francisco Varela and his notions of human perception, productive action, and creativity or invention, provide Turpin with a theoretical framework to investigate these core devices around drawing.
Further concepts that come to the fore are derived from the French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s writings, including signature, individuation, or characteristic mark-making. On a more personal level, Turpin’s work flows from self-reflexivity; self-discovery and self- generating productivity and the notion of self-as-being as opposed to self-as-nothing. Self-generating productivity entails the simultaneity of intention, gesture and act, and a creative coming-together of these elements.
Turpin attempts to explain her understanding of the ‘blind’ aspect of the drawing process, and in this regard relies heavily on the thinking of Derrida. She aligns her interpretation of his expositions on this phenomenon with the thinking of Varela. Varela accordingly provides clarity on the circularity and unifying function of human perception. The unification of antimonies such as body and mind, inside and outside, and self and life-world, lie at the core of Turpin’s drawing, functioning as a unifying interface.
Biographies
Lucy Jane Turpin was born in Johannesburg in 1983. She completedher Honours Degree in Fine Arts at the University of Witwatersrand and her Master’s Degree at the University of Stellenbosch in March 2015 with Cum Laude. Her practical focus is drawing and installation. Furthermore she has a strong interest in varying curatorial projects. Turpin will have a solo show at Commune.1 gallery in February 2016.
