IAN ANDREWS
THE SKETCHBOOK AND THE COLLIDER
DRAWING LINKS BETWEEN FINE ART AND PARTICLE PHYSICS
IN COLLABORATION WITH PROF. KOSTAS NIKOLOPOULOS
“Detectors are really the way that physicists express themselves, to say something that you have in your guts. In the case of painters, it’s painting with sculptors, its sculpture and in the case of the experimental physicist its detectors! The detector is the image of the guy who designed it.”
The Sketchbook and the Collider is an on-going collaboration with Prof Kostas Nikolopoulos from the particle physics group at University Birmingham and evolves from my residency at the University in 2018 culminating in the exhibition “The sketchbook and the Collider,” at the University and subsequent Arts Council funded exhibition at the Library of Birmingham entitled “Collision Event” in 2019.
The work takes as its starting point the search for equivalents between the primary artistic language of drawing and the elementary particles and their interactions.
It comprises three main elements: The search for an intimate connection between pure visual language and elemental particle characteristics and interactions. Development of the use of moving image work to explore actual movement and interaction in a drawing context equivalent to the interaction of particles and finally it’s culmination in the development of performative pieces that involve “live” drawing and the cooperation, participation and “interaction” of artists, scientists and members of the public.
“The quantum world describes things not as they “are” but as they “occur” and interact. A world not of objects but of events.”
NEWS
Honoured that The Sketchbook and the Collider has been awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant for 2023/24 from the PKF organisation in New York following an extensive and rigorous selection process. The grant funds my living expenses for the year freeing time to concentrate on the development of new work taking drawing into three dimensions integrated with moving image work. The award is in support of Lee Krasner’s mission to advance the work of visual artists.
The Image (right) shows Lee Krasner in Hans Hoffman’s studio, early 1940s. Photo ©Robert E. Mates and Paul Katz. Lee Krasner artwork ©Pollock-Krasner Foundation/ARS. Image courtesy of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
Photographs by Max Blake Andrews
Ian Andrews has just been named as one of the Feeney fellows for 2023/24 by the John Feeney Charitable Trust. The Fellowship funding will enable the integration of drawing, three-dimensional structures and the moving image components of his work. He will be collaborating with a Birmingham-based fabricator to create three-dimensional structures on which the drawings will be created and with a video production expert to upgrade his skills in filming, editing and projection.
Ian Andrews has been appointed artist in residence at the University of Birmingham to work with the Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine for the next six months starting in September 2023/24 working with a research team looking at the disruption of circadian rhythms in the brain.
The Sketchbook and the Collider at the Forum Exposition Bonlieu in Annecy, France as a guest of Claire Adam Bourdarios from Laboratoire d’ Annecy de Physique des Particules as part of the Fete de la science in October 2022. Featured in the December issue of the CERN COURIER. https://cerncourier.com/a/the-sketchbook-and-the-collider/
The Sketchbook and the Collider was invited to talk to the International Particle Physics Outreach Group at their annual conference at CERN in Geneva 1n October 2023
CURRENT - UPCOMING
Photograph by Marcin Sz
Rhythmical: the particles, the cave, the brain and the body. The exhibition features work from a range of sources including the residency working with the University Birmingham’s SMQB Centre looking at the disruption of neural networks, drawing in caves as an equivalent to my physicist’s subterranean detection experiments and the ongoing search for equivalence between interaction of particles and the language of drawing. My overall aim is to establish the existence of a rhythmical pattern operating across vastly differing scales and in response animate the drawings through moving image approaches and integrate with drawings on sculptural forms that must be negotiated, introducing movement and participation in response to this rhythmic choreography operating throughout the universe.
