Drawing Space – interior and exterior

‘… there is only the illusion of space.’

Alberto Giacometti, 1949

This exhibition features drawings by the Oxford-based artist and illustrator T. F. Ashley, displaying a variety of approaches to the representation of space.

One part of the room is devoted to both paintings and drawings of the Peak District, particularly the Dark Peak, where the raw topography of the landscape is especially exposed.

The exhibition also presents large-scale interior spaces: mainly churches and museums in Oxford and London. These scenes encompass angles of vision wide enough to challenge a basic premise of academic drawing, through which the subject-matter is viewed as if from a fixed position on a single picture plane. The drawings on display adopt various approaches to this challenge, from working drawings in strict perspective to more improvisatory approaches that seek to capture the experience of moving the eye and the head across a space.

These large-scale drawings are supplemented with small studies of Oxford city scenes which experiment with varying degrees of abstraction.

The exhibition is open daily from 10.00 –18.00.