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“Sleight,” Shillam + Smith 3, London, England, 1999

Solo exhibition

These drawings used Japanese calligraphic correction ink–orange in color–and employed nontraditional drawing implements. The drawings explored scale and ideas about how a line can be made. I mainly worked in groups of three, starting with a less-developed drawing, small in scale in relation to the paper. I would begin the next version on a new sheet in the same location and with the same implement. Essentially, the second and third drawings replicated the first but passed beyond it. The second drawing was a middle marker and the third would only stop on arriving near the edges of the paper.

As in my later drawings, the system that was set up and the mark that was made became the framework within which the drawing developed–with the variation in line created by the ability of the drawing tool to divest itself of ink. The time expended gave the work its scale. The residue left on the paper is also affected by how the drawing tool is held. The trace left by the tool is a timeline of activity. The rhythm of strokes is seen in the uneven blobs of ink and thinning lines which mark pauses for refill and repeated beginnings. In a review in Time Out, Martin Coomer writes: “Carmel Buckley has drawn a series of single and concentric circles, each composed of small dots or lines in luminous orange ink which, traditionally, is used in Japan as a correction ink. The project is fraught with error; success hinges on the conflict between the perfection of the intended circle and her inability to achieve it. An engaging installation.” At this time my work in sculpture was concerned with imagined structures developed from everyday found objects such as a brush or a tea strainer. Such found objects launched a meditation on and an imaginary extension of these structures. These sculptures used wire to suggest both volume and form while simultaneously existing as a line in space. Through the use of fine wire I have attempted to work in a way that suggests the work is coming into being or about to disappear.

A catalogue with an essay by Paola Morsiani, then an Assistant Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX (currently Director of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY), accompanied the exhibition.

The exhibition was reviewed by Maria Walsh in Art Monthly, “Carmel Buckley,” Shillam + Smith 3, and by Martin Coomer, in Time Out.