By:

This workshop includes an introductory paper (20 minutes) arguing for drawing as a postmedia indignant practice operating as a political tool in its exposing of wrongs perpetrated in and through societies.. Case studies represent a range of methodologies: 1) the recouping of half-obliterated genocidal moments in the history of a people through the ‘colonialera cinema’, as e.g. in recent drawn stage sets by William Kentridge; 2) the drawing of attention to the art historical conventions framing ‘small disasters’ as deployed from Hogarth to Goya and referenced in contemporary ‘illumiera’ by Marie Strauss; 3) the deployment of art historical references to critique hegemonic structures in colonialist societies, as in recent drawn fugues by Donal Fitzpatrick; and 4) Kurt Adams’ construction of sublime digitally grayscaled drawn environments simultaneously celebrating the sumptiousness of surfaces in reference to Monet’s Giverny and dystopic urban life amongst post-industrial metropolitan architectures.

The introductory paper then extends to the viewing of four suites of drawing with each viewing (of 5 minutes x 4) followed by staged conversations (of 5 minutes x 4) prepared beforehand to highlight aspects of contemporary interarts drawing in its roles as a critical tool through which societies may come to understand their own histories, rights and responsibilities.

The staged conversations are prepared with other interested conference presenters; while particularly inviting audience particpation in response to a list of discussion points disseminated at commencement of the workshop..

Stream: Analysing Artforms, Meaning and Representation

Paper: Exposing Society

Being involved in two countries (New Zealand and South Africa), she is interested in experiences of travel, migration and exile; and her conference papers, journal articles, catalogue essays and curated exhibitions explore a range of situated contemporary practices in terms of their materialities and processes; their theoretical frameworks; and their historical locatedness. Her work positions itself on a research platform involving interdisciplinarity; the politics of location; and poststructuralist theory. In accord with these engagements and as a critique of pre-Māori Renaissance-era arts enquiries (in New Zealand) and apartheid-era arts enquiries (in South Africa), she distances herself from formalist approaches to arts practices and argues that all migratory arts practices – in the literal or figurative sense – are politically charged acts resulting in effects of a political and thus social nature.

Working at Otago Polytechnic School of Art in Dunedin, New Zealand, Leoni functions in a milieu modelled on the conservatorium in the sense that media-specific teaching units are maintained with a strong base of material exploration and processual investigation. However, these units also work across and inter- media in their fruitful connection around ideas and histories, both personal and political. In this context, drawing plays across an expanded field and can become a refuge, a home, or a liberation for artists who sometimes still find themselves dominated by disciplinary boundaries. Outside of this immediate milieu, Leoni’s research also involves the work of a range of international artists whose work finds a creative nexus within the multifarious practices of contemporary drawing. She is especially interested in how this plays out in practice and in the theoretical and historical frameworks of drawing as a ludic, performative activity.