To complement our exhibition 'Tapestry: Changing Concepts'
This online workshop has its starting point in Matteo Rosa’s series of drawings Whole (2016-2018), shown in the exhibition 'Tapestry: Changing Concepts'. Created with black ink in an intimate scale, the works explore the use of line drawing and chiaroscuro, evoking both natural and abstract formations, while bearing witness to the tradition of automatic drawing. In this experimental workshop, the artist will begin by introducing the series, and will then share some preliminary drawing exercises with you, and finally invite you to create your own freely improvised pieces – led by your own individuality but allowing for chance to play a part too.
Free but booking is essential. This will be an online group class of 12. You will be sent a joining link a week before. A materials list will be included in your booking confirmation email.
Matteo Rosa
Matteo Rosa was born in Italy in 1978 and now lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. He holds a BA (Hons) in Tapestry from Edinburgh College of Art and an MFA in Visual Arts from Malmö Art Academy. His work has been shown at numerous venues, including Galleri S:t Gertrud in Malmö and Galleria Civica di Trento in Italy. Rosa’s work is held in several public collections, such as Malmö Art Museum and Public Art Agency Sweden. At the core of Rosa’s work is an interest in the unfolding of awareness. This brings him to a fascination for the interconnectedness of things – the play between form and formlessness, transience and timelessness, imagination and perception. His practice explores art's potential to address forgotten or neglected aspects of the self, such as the primal feeling of being in one's own body, at a time when we are exposed to the largest amount of external information in history. Nature and its contemplation are a recurrent theme, pointing to the viewer's inner stillness, beyond conceptualisation. In particular, Rosa is drawn to those processes and formations that in the natural world seem to occur spontaneously, without any planning or intentionality – investigating the potential parallels between such phenomena and the tradition of automatic drawing in art. He employs various media, from drawing and painting to photography, video, text, textiles and site-speci3c installation.
Whole: A drawing workshop with artist Matteo Rosa