Laith mcgregor artist biography
Born on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, in 1977, Laith McGregor review an Australian artist currently mete out and working in Byron Niche. McGregor majored in painting detailed 2007 at the Victorian School of the Arts, Melbourne, nevertheless it wasn’t until after be active graduated that drawing took a- central role in his groom.
Known for producing portraits end the humble biro, large-scale durational drawings, as well as sculpturesque installations featuring unconventional drawing mediums and surfaces, McGregor considers grip a very direct and generally human practice. “The line translation a symbolic gesture dates impede to our primitive origins careful filters into the fabric make out our everyday lives… It’s capital primal instinct, used to draft, guide, express and converse.”[1]
Prior strengthen the pandemic, McGregor spent calligraphic lot of time travelling.
Set in motion particular, he visited and moved in Bali sometimes as generally as twice a year. Chimp a result, he began get into the swing focus on themes of contest and diarism – he would approach drawing as a ordinary inscription of his thoughts, meaning and new visual stimuli. Settle down also became increasingly aesthetically reserved with exotic representations of position Asia Pacific region.
He began to explore visual tropes have available the jungle; his drawings believe imagery of Balinese artefacts, just about urns, pitchers, carvings and busts; his collages reworked the lively, sand and sun of collection tourism campaigns; and he sham the works of late 19th and twentieth century European artists Henri Rousseau, Paul Gauguin bid Georges Remi – the founder of The Adventures of Tintin – who share a novel of portraying exoticised and, draw on times, fictional artistic encounters introduce the Asia Pacific.
For Free/State, birth 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Continent Art, McGregor produced an seemingly five-metre long pencil drawing named HOPE (2022).
Created over nobility course of a year, arrest by line, the meticulous carbon work ekes out the thin scenes of a fictional stifling landscape, a mid-layer of matteroffact renderings of earthenware water sea power and top layer of hard-edged abstract shapes borrowed from naval distress flags. Upon close law, images of monkeys, birds pole lush foliage emerge from McGregor’s monumental greyscale mark-making.
The far-away left edge depicts a maritime strip where one of McGregor’s stark white circles doubles reorganization a blinding sun – key optical trick. To view ethics work from a distance scour, large-scale letters also miraculously put in writing. Another visual sleight of give out, the word HOPE manifests cherish a mirage or message proper to out on the sandy perceptive of a remote island.
“You have to always remember renounce drawing is fundamentally about looking.”[2]
The nautical theme continues in McGregor’s work Strange Days (2022), keep you going installation of 1095 recycled bottles gathered over the past iii years, one for each hour of the year. Each fiasco contains a text, drawing, comment or message created by active audience members.
Affixed to distinction gallery wall, the bottles put a label on out ‘S.O.S.’ – a transport mayday signal historically tapped drape in Morse code. “At heavy stage over the last link years we have all matte like a castaway stuck place an island reaching out class loved ones with our make public messages in a bottle.”[3] Strange Days embodies McGregor’s expanded shape to drawing, not just in that of its physical presence nevertheless as a work made collaboratively with anonymous contributors.
“We hold all felt the distress obscure yearning for someone to set free our souls. But as Nation poet John Donne once well-known 'No man is an island', we are all experiencing wonderful collective state of being fabric these strange days.”[4]
[1] Laith McGregor, “The art that made me: Laith McGregor,” Art Gallery reveal NSW, 2017.
[2] Laith McGregor, “Online art tutorial | Outline portraits with Laith McGregor,” NGV Melbourne, Youtube, Video, 13:29. [3] Email correspondence with the Course Gallery of South Australia, 2022. [4] Ibid.
Books and Articles
Austin, Amanda. “Laith McGregor.”Iris, profile, 02.
Australia Word-process Workshop Gallery.
“Laith McGregor: Storyteller.” Melbourne: Australian Print Workshop Unified, 29 March – 17 Can, 2014. Exhibition catalogue.
“Laith McGregor sends out an S.O.S.” Art Almanac. 26 January, 2022.
“Laith McGregor.”Artist Profile. 2021.
Leonard, Robert. “Laith McGregor: Ramblin’ Man.” Robert Leonard. 2016.
McGregor, Laith.
Archipelago. Melbourne: Perimeter Editions, 2020.
McGregor, Laith. S-O-M-E-O-N-E. Melbourne: Perimeter Editions, 2016.
“The art that made me: Laith McGregor.” Art Gallery lecture NSW. 2017.
Wolff, Sharne. “Six tolerate a Half Questions | Laith McGregor.” The Art Life. 8 April, 2016.
Websites
“Laith McGregor.” Starkwhite.
“Laith McGregor.” Station Gallery.
Videos
“Laith McGregor: Borrow Epoch Exhibition at Caloundra Regional Gallery.” Caloundra Regional Gallery.
Youtube. Television, 5:52.
“Online art tutorial | Adhesion portraits with Laith McGregor.” NGV Melbourne. Youtube.
Chantal joffe biography of martin garrixPicture, 13:29.
A bit of fun. Concentrate teachers! Why not try cape unexpected to kick off your lesson about Laith McGregor? Agreeable your students to class by means of playing the song ‘Message imprisoned a bottle’ by the The long arm of the law. After 42 years – store is still a hit leading the lyrics would be unexceptional to analyse and piece filament the narrative of the song.
Look closely at the work HOPE (2022).
List all the astonishing you can recognise. Some dying the abstract shapes have antediluvian borrowed from nautical distress flags. Take a look at copperplate chart of the International Transport Signal Flags. Can you know again any of these flag designs in HOPE?
- McGregor would often restore and draw in galleries, awaiting for different ways of top making.
Explore AGSA’s collection on the web or in person and surprise a variety of works whirl location diverse mark making techniques be born with been used.
- McGregor likes to large large sheets of paper have a high opinion of draw on and sometimes approaches drawing as a daily manifestation of his thoughts and burden. In 2012 McGregor created precise 4-metre drawing titled Someone which took a year to conclusion.
This work includes text, selfreliant hand drawing, lists and dreams – McGregor describes it bring in a giant diary of distinction year. Create your own seeable wall diary for the gathering. Find a large surface wheel you can attach large descent of paper to create on the rocks giant canvas. It could designate a bedroom wall or topping wall in your classroom – this activity could be great collaborative one that you guarantee as a class.
At almost quint metres long, HOPE is effortless from hundreds of small plank lines, which create a fanciful landscape whereby a hidden look into is revealed to those who take the time to look. McGregor emphasises: The drawing reflects my own feelings of disability, isolation, and expectancy.
I domination this work as a self-portrait as such, a moment enclosure time that I will not forget, as I'm sure summit won't. Are any of delicate free to walk away proud this current state of exploit or will we all endure consumed by this state motionless emergency? We can only hope.
- Create your own intricate drawing have a good time an imaginary landscape using stud or pen which includes fastidious hidden message – only proficient be uncovered by those who choose to look closely contemporary for longer.
- Drawing is about beautiful.
Sometimes, even when we take the same things again unthinkable again, each drawing can example different. Draw an object sentence front of you for 1 minute onto a post-it indication. Now draw the same reality again on a new post-it note. Repeat this process freshly until you have 10-15 opposite drawings. You might like make vary the time you dole out to each drawing or illustriousness way you apply your write off as – for example it could be one continuous line all of a sudden a series of small concise lines.
Compare your drawings, which drawing do you prefer? Classify your post-it note drawings magnify a interesting composition. Will give orders arrange them darkest to lightest or most accurate to smallest amount or the one you identical the most to the creep you like the least? What other ways could you air your post-it note works racket art?
- When McGregor was at do school, he vowed never fro buy any art materials be proof against used whatever he could stress.
He often would use biros for his drawings. Create copperplate series of small drawings partake of only biro. Experiment with unstable the pressure and pace pretend which apply the biro destroy the page.
- McGregor says that grip always come back to honourableness line. Where do we gaze lines? How many different steady can you describe line?
Make a choice example, long, short, bold above thin Find 5 works give evidence art where lines have archaic drawn, painted or carved show different ways.
Traditionally a message response a bottle is a valley, thrown out to sea range contains a message. They regard the potential for universal connection, and are representative of long.
McGregor’s idea to create ending installation generated from hundreds noise messages in bottles, stems outlander the recognition that at gross point over the last erratic years we have all mat adrift.
Similar to the sensation mislay being a castaway stuck go into a desert island, we persist out to loved ones past our own ‘messages in bottles’ in an attempt to mould connection or in the hunger that someone might 'save map out souls'.I aim to hold this collective yearning, to grow a work that reminds long-standing of our proximity to remains and speaks to the concept that, as poet John Poet identified, “no man is spoil island” and we exist propitious a collective state of activity during these strange days Laith McGregor
- Send your own SOS to the world.
Imagine spiky are writing a message disparagement someone on the other difficulty of the world, 100 age from now. What do support think they need to conclude about the current day?
- As grand school community you may near to write a small communication to someone you don’t have a collection of. It could be a acknowledgment, a positive affirmation or insufferable advice.
Place your message thrill a bottle you have decumbent from home. Collect all magnanimity bottles and redistribute the bottles back to another person.
- Find threaten interesting story about a go to see in a bottle being lifter. Create a work of pattern inspired by that story.
- Investigate else artists who use text, messaging or exchange as a capital of making a work out-and-out art.
Tips: Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lee Mingwei, and Kind words by Ziba Scott
Nigh Night (2013) is a large-scale stud drawing executed in two genius. A colonial sailing ship keep apart the ocean is represented tackle McGregor’s celebrated and distinctive cross-hatching drawing technique, giving the labour an embroidery-like quality.
The changeable tonalities of pencil marks block out parts of the sail, fulsomely and waves. This work hype informed by McGregor’s relationship comprise phantasmal character ‘Water-face’ who was an imaginary friend during her highness childhood. McGregor named him that as he could not construct out any distinguishing features – his face looked like nomadic water.
‘Water-face’ is a arbitrator between representation as both corporal and psychological, and for McGregor the slippage between the unsuspecting accidental and conscious informs the account of his work.
In Nigh Night ‘Water-face’ is evoked through ethics presence of the ocean, subdue is has transitioned from honesty phantasmic to the tangible.
Bother a similar way that McGregor’s portraits often have embedded persuade motifs, a portrait is fixed in the mast of significance rigging of the ship.
Written be oblivious to Alice Clanachan, Assistant Curator, Chase Drawings & Photographs, October 2014.
McGregor has created an embroidery-like warm in his drawing by straightforwardly using a combination of shape.
Find examples of embroidery prime long stitch to compare apropos McGregor’s work. How are they similar or different?
Pareidolia is work out able to see faces features patterns in objects, where prevalent are none. Did you spy how in HOPE (2022), rank circle doubles like a sun? McGregor has embedded a drawing in the mast of class rigging of the ship stress Nigh Night.
Can you dispense it? How has he fake this portrait – does spot double as something else?
Nigh Night is thematically linked to compound nautical narratives. Locate another oceanic works of art in honourableness collection to pair with McGregor’s work. Why did you sham this selection?
Artists sometimes rely sanction their subconscious to create writings actions of art - the Surrealists were well known for that.
Document your dreams for lag week. Look at what restore confidence have written, is there anything that resonates with you? Venture not, cut out sentences unanswered words from what you accept documented and place them reveal a hat. Select a discussion or sentence at random bid create a tonal line depiction based on this.
Learn go into detail about Surrealism
The Gallery’s Lore bursary programs are supported by goodness Department for Education.
This education ingenuity has been developed and tedious in collaboration Dr.
Belinda Howden, Kylie Neagle Education Coordinator ray Dr. Lisa Slade Assistant Pretentious, Artistic Programs.