Ivan Liotchev developed a collaborative mark-making and drawing project by travelling across the UK and abroad to invite people from different communities to draw with him on large canvases.
The project originally started in Peckham, South London, in 2010, when the artist asked friends to draw with him. Intrigued by notions of chaos and chance, the artist became interested in the unpredictability of what everyone would draw and the further unpredictability of how everyone’s drawings would connect to form a whole. He began developing a series of drawing sessions, inviting social workers, scientists, children and their families. The drawings developed into an ‘encyclopedic channelling’ of ideas, which he described as becoming ”zeitgeist tapestries of individual and collective concerns, internet-like collaborative ‘wikiworks’ that no one was the sole author of”.
The project celebrates the notion that everyone has the ability to express their inner voice through drawing on an equal playing field. Liotchev aims to create a creative platform where improvisation is encouraged and leads to an organic building of visual ideas. Questions addressing the role of the individual amidst the crowd, authorship, originality and free will in artistic creation are at the centre of the work.
Liotchev invites audiences and participants to question if the drawings made can be considered unique to them despite the inevitable patterns emerging and the influence of other participants. He also asks how the collaborations challenge art’s theoretical notions of authorship and the uniqueness of the hand of the artist.
The exhibition at The Art House represented works made with communities in Wakefield, in partnership with Next Generation, YMCA White Rose and The Art House
